Light to Work By

When we first saw our house, the garage had some fantastic work lights hanging from the ceiling. When we moved in, they were gone. In the two years since, Keith has grumbled about the lack of good lighting to work on projects out there but we hadn't jumped on doing anything about the situation.

Then he was scrolling through the employee "classifieds" at work where people from the company can list things they are selling, renting, or would like to buy. He came across a listing for fluorescent work lights for $5 each. Mr. Fast Fingers was dialing the number in no time. Turns out the woman had been using them for starting seedlings but was no longer gardening so Keith came home with three work lights for $15. What a steal! Lucky for him, all he had to do was install some hooks to hang them from and plug them in because they were pretty much identical to the ones the previous owners were using that just plug into outlets in the rafters, which are all connected to the main light switch. So for $15 and an hour's worth of work, Keith just lost his "There's not enough good light out there to work on that now" excuse. (Bet you didn't consider that, did you dear?)

And just because Keith likes you all to have visual proof that he actually does work around here (no matter what I say), here are the thrilling action shots of light hanging:

Once again, the man lights up my life.

Disqualified!

If you've seen our bathroom, you know that we were unwilling contestants in the World's Most Garish Bathroom competition. We've recently been inspired by a lot of HGTV and Holmes on Homes, as well as younghouselove, and decided to do a mini-makeover of our one and only bathroom.

This is what we started with:

You could say it had some vintage charm. We just called it ugly.

Our plan started off as just paint the bathroom. So after removing the wallpaper, washing the walls, and receiving a warning that I might flip my lid while the bathroom was in shambles, Keith did that. We chose Cork in a satin finish. Vast improvement, no lids flipped. Except the one on the paint can. It took two coats of primer, two coats of paint, and a little help from Mocha.

That was going to be the finish line, but we decided to go just a little further. We didn't want to shell out the money on new towels bars and such, but really hated to put up the silver ones we had. So, we decided to spray paint them with a copper-finish spray paint. And then we thought, why not paint the vanity cabinet a dark brown? We knew it wouldn't quite look like wood, but it really couldn't get any worse than it was. Off to Lowe's for spray paint and a quart of paint for the cabinet (we went with Molasses). And while we were there, we decided we couldn't face putting the hideous over-the-toilet monstrosity back in but we wanted the storage space, so we bought a nice new one of those too. And a light fixture. Because the old one fit the old theme (which was "ugly") and I was in an open-wallet mood. Keith has learned to recognize and exploit these rare episodes.

He even remembered to paint the screws!

The last detail was buying a few new knobs for the over-the-toilet cabinet and the medicine cabinet so they tied in as well. Here's the finished product:

Mocha decided Frogger is the appropriate accessory
for the bathroom. He does match the tile!

We still have the crazy tile but it isn't nearly as offensive when everything else gets mellowed out. We're on the look-out for some kind of valance or curtain (maybe with a little pink and blue to tie the tile in), a wastebasket that didn't come from the dollar store, and a rug or mat to cover the area between the toilet and the sink (read as: cover as much tile as possible). No rush to find those though. We think we've come a long way for less than $200 (most of which was the new cabinet). Totally worth being dq'ed in the World's Most Garish Bathroom competition.

Last note: we did save a piece of each wallpaper, not just from the bathroom but also the dining room and kitchen when we tore that off, and are trying to come up with a fun and tasteful way to display a little bit of our house's previous "charm".

Let There Be Light

So while Mocha's been doing this:

Keith's been pretty busy. Last Friday, we headed to the Home Depot in search of a new light for Bert's room. Because the existing one was, to be nice, dated. And kind of naked looking. We pretty quickly found one that we both liked, was a reasonable price, and had the same aged-bronze look as the curtain rod we bought for the room. So we pulled it off the shelf, bought it, and brought it home.

On Saturday, Keith began the tedious process of installing the new fixture. Normally, this wouldn't be so difficult (at least it doesn't seem like it should) but because the house was built in 1923, the metal ceiling mount and junction box don't fit standard modern light fixtures. We ran into this with the new lights we installed in the kitchen, dining room, and living room shortly after moving in and it can be done with a little creative engineering.

After several hours of tinkering and a trip to the hardware store, Keith came downstairs. And here's how that conversation went:

K: We can't use this light.
T: Why, did you break it?
K: No, it doesn't have a chain.
T: I know. Why would we want a chain?
K: No, not a chain to hang it from, a pull chain.
T: Oooohhhh. Well that was stupid.

In our excitement over our next home project, we had completely forgotten that all the bedroom lights upstairs turn on and off with a pull chain. No light switches in the bedrooms. (Envision much fumbling in the dark, hand outstretched, looking for small dangling chains.) So, our choices either became head back out and shop for a light with a pull chain (do they even still make them?) or  Keith could install a light switch. We opted for the switch. Two reasons behind this: who wants to fumble around looking for the pull chain with a baby in hand, and if we ever sell the house, light switches might be appreciated.

At this point, the project had to be put on hold until Sunday because the hardware store was already closed and we had plans to go to dinner with friends that night. We were telling them this story and they had a great suggestion: a dimmer switch. They have a new baby and said it was really nice to have that dimmer for checking on him in the middle of the night and not have bright lights (thanks guys!).

Like a trooper, Keith went out Sunday for conduit and brackets, junction boxes, dimmer switch, and non-metallic Romex wire. Luckily, the wall where we wanted the switch is shared with a closet so instead of having to run wire down inside our plaster-and-lathe walls, he was able to install a junction box in the attic crawlspace,

run the wire down inside the closet (inside the conduit), drill through the wall and cut out for the switch box,

put in the switch box,

and install a dimmer switch.

He did reference the handy Reader's Digest Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual for some drawings that described how his switches needed to be wired (page 143 if you really want to know). His only other electric experience is working for the electric company. Well, that's not quite true. He did help my dad install an outlet for our freezer in the basement. 

Here's the final results:

I have to tell you, neither of us can keep our hands of that fancy little dimmer switch.

My honey's no dim bulb, now is he?