Post-Electrician Update

The electricians came today for our lighting re-do project. Here are some "in the middle" photos (you'll see why I say that instead of "after" as you look below.


This shows the kitchen ceiling after the old box was removed. This is the strangest bit of sheetrock/drywall work I've ever seen - it was dropped about 1.5" from the ceiling.

You can also see the holes they had to make in the wall (why that big, though?) which will need to be repaired also.









This picture shows the hole in the ceiling now after the extra sheet-rock was removed. The electricians roughed in two places here for pendants (where there used to be just one for the fluorescent fixtures). Obviously, we will be having this fixed! After we have a ceiling, we can install pendant lights.







I know this is a little blurry - I'm not the great photographer in the family. :) But, this is without a flash to show the level of light in the kitchen at night with the new recessed cans turned on. It feels brighter in reality.










Moving now to the Living Room. This picture is looking up at the back of the room (farthest from the street). Notice the extra hole at the top of the photo; directly above is our master bath plumbing, so this fixture had to be moved over. Originally, the electricians left the fixture on the other side of the room in the place that's now a hole, but I knew the fact that they didn't align would bother me. So, I asked them to move the fixture to make it align, which they did easily & cheerfully. This means two holes in the living room ceiling, but we're going to have someone come in to fix the kitchen ceiling anyhow. (Initially we feared that there would be a 12-15 foot long by 1 foot wide strip cut thru the ceiling, which didn't have to happen - so two holes aren't that bad!)






Another blurry photo, but it's just to show level of light at night, without the ceiling fan light turned on (and without a flash on the camera).

Now, if I could just figure out how to arrange the furniture! This room is long & narrow, with a large window at the front and french doors/windows at the back. One long wall has the fireplace and the opposite long wall is trisected by the door to the kitchen and the front entry.

Add the fact that we have two sofas (his/hers from pre-marriage), and the need to somehow use both the TV & fireplace as focal points, and you can see our trouble. I've been playing with shapes on graph paper all night. I had to stop before I got any more annoyed! I wish there were a way it would all fit without looking cluttered, but that's going to be awfully hard!

More home improvement before photos

Here are additional photos from our kitchen. Read more about this in the previous post.

This photo is from the breakfast/laundry area (back of the house) looking thru to the dining room.

Notice more honey-oak cabinets. When Matt bought the house (about a decade ago), the walls had a faux-southwest-motif. He changed that to this lovely butter yellow color (from Restoration Hardware) before we got married.

There are only a few things I like in this photo:

1. The flowers. They're clearly not there all the time. :)
2. The framed pictures on the wall behind the flowers. That frame was a gift from a really nice guy who played on Matt's softball team and is part of our church. I put in close-ups of bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush (red), and some random yellow flower from our honeymoon.
3. The containers over the stove (clear glass with metal tops - from my parents).
4. The abundance of kitchen equipment. Turns out that Matt & I both enjoy cooking from scratch, so we use the blender/food processor/knives/etc. a lot.
   

What I don't like:

1. The original-to-the-house stove, which is hard to clean, and lacks today's bells & whistles. The thing refuses to die, however, so it's still here.
2. The cabinets & counter. I wish the cabinets went to the ceiling, so there'd be a little more storage (for infrequently-used items). I wish the counter were some other material. I'm not totally against laminate, but I am against bad laminate like this.

This photo is looking from near the stove towards the sink. Seeing it this way reminds me that I need to straighten the magnets on the fridge again!

What I like here:

1. Dishwasher. It's a Bosch and cleans well (though you have to clean it every couple of months to avoid it smelling funny). We got it scratch-and-dent at Sears, for a fraction of the price. I can't tell where the dent is anymore.
2. The pictures of friends & family & vacation spots on the fridge.

What I don't like here:

1. The side-by-side fridge. Not good for holding pizza boxes or large trays.
2. The fact that so much stuff sits out (i.e the cooking wine we use maybe twice a year). Normally, the island would be covered as well as the counter & top of fridge.
   

Final photo for today. This one is looking from the dining room door towards the back of the house.

The doors behind the island are a built-in-pantry. It provides almost all of our food storage, so in that realm, I love it. However, it's not built for efficiency (many regular-size bottles/cans/boxes don't fit).

The white door to the left is the half-bath (the bathroom we've been doing all the work to). Next to the half-bath door (out of this picture) is the living room.

The microwave sits on the counter, occupying maybe 10% of our counter space. It would be nice to have one that's integrated with the stove hood, to save space.




We're not re-doing the entire kitchen right now, just installing some new lights today. But, we hope to someday work on the kitchen - so I figured it was good to capture true "before" photos.

More home improvement

I think Matt & I (both of us - but especially him, who's lived here the longest) will celebrate tomorrow, providing the electrician we're hired does something with this monstrosity:


It's a light fixture, built into our kitchen ceiling. The wood (we call it a cheesy '80s honey oak finish) matches the cabinets.






What we don't like about it:

1. The cheesy honey oak finish.
2. The sheer size - it is far larger than the island it sits over.
   
3. The missing panel (the panels are plastic, and are sold at Home Depot, so we could replace them - but every time we try, another panel falls down and breaks).
   
4. The fact that it has fluorescent tubes.
5. The fact that said fluorescent tubes don't actually work. (Believe it or not, the light switch was in the "on" position in this photo.)

We're hired an electrician to install recessed lights in both the kitchen, and in the living room. He's also going to wire the space where the honey oak monstrosity light currently is to work with a pendant or other hanging light.

Hopefully this is just step 1 towards improving our '80s-era kitchen. If only we could magically have more storage space without the expense of remodeling and new cabinetry... :)

Our little birdie

This is not very interesting at all, but I felt like writing something, so I shall tell you the story of the world's most hard-headed bird...

Last fall, when I was working at home a lot, there would be plenty of days that I'd spend hunched over my work laptop and home computer, simultaneously. I'd be working in our office, (as I am now), with the sun filtering in thru the window near my desk (as I wish it was now).

On one such day, I was working, peacefully, when I heard a huge THUNK which sounded like it came from the dining room, directly below where I sit. I ran downstairs, panicked that something had broken. Yet, nothing was out of place. So, I walked upstairs and got back to work, only to have the same thing happen again and again. A few more trips downstairs and I finally figured out what the noise was...

The world's most hard-headed bird.

Yes, it seems that we have a very dumb bird, with an increasingly hard head living in the bushes outside our house. He apparently is a busy bird, needing frequent breaks sitting on a branch. He can't rest long, though. He must get up soon and head out into the world. However, he apparently has issues telling the difference between our window panes and open air. Often, he'll rush into the window several times in a row -- clearly not learning from the lumps on his head. I wonder - does he see little birdies flying around his head like characters do in old cartoons when they get hit on the head?

Since those sunny days last fall, we've been interrupted many times by this little bird. I've tried washing the windows or making them dirtier, closing the shades or opening them. Nothing makes a difference. This just seems to be the not a very smart member of the aviary class. I'd be slightly worried about the bird, but he seems to still have reasons to sing.

I tried several times this weekend to snap a picture of the little guy (I think he's greyish brown with a little bit of orange), but he seems to know I'm there, and flies away. Odd that he's aware enough to tell that, but he can't tell the difference between open air and a dirty window pane.

I'm wondering if he might migrate north one of these days. Maybe in a few months he'll start pecking on your windows instead. Say hi from me if he does. :)