May your days be Merry and BRIGHT – December 8-9 & Dec 15-16

Yes, it’s true.  We have lights!  New lights!  Not fixtures, just switches and pigtails with bulbs like these

And this switch looks a little odd but we’ll fix that.

And, this one isn’t wired to the breaker panel yet but look at that push button switch. I love them!!

I want to try to chemically strip that brass plate so that it will get all old and patina-ed. I think it’s sealed now.

But, the real amazingness of this feat is that now I can do things like get the mess of a dining room and piano room and entry way cleaned up during non-light hours. There are so few hours of light and it’ll be so nice to start getting things in some semblance of order. The piano room has looked like this since we moved from our apartment and just filled this room up willy-nilly.  This picture is actually the straitened version of the room.  I re-arranged and stacked things.

In addition to some awesome electrician work, we also took down this odd plaster ceiling in the room that houses our electrical panel in the basement. Messy Messy!

After we got the ceiling down, and removed all the plaster and lath debris, I decided to do a quick wipe-down of the walls. It looks soooo much better. You can see here I’ve done the top part but not the bottom of this section.

Once it was all wiped down and I scrubbed the floor for good measure, I decided to take a can of Kilz spray primer and touch up the crumbling brick. These brick walls are just dividing walls. They don’t have any structural necessity. This room was once the coal room which is why they are here at all. If these were structural walls, we would need to chip out the crumbling bricks and replace them. Since they are just decorative and largely unnecessary, I just wanted to keep them from creating a infinite amount of dust and grime. For this purpose, the spray paint worked great. I just sprayed a heavy coat, moving quickly to really cover the crumbling area before the force of the spray blew all the dust around. After I let it dry for 24 hours, I touched it up with another coat to really seal it up. I may take some thinset the next time we have it out and just fill in the crevices. Again, I’m just trying to keep them from making a mess and not trying to “fix” them. The Kilz did a really great job of sealing them up. Now when the kitty rubs against them, he doesn’t turn brick red.

Since the electrical closet is nice and closed off, I’m planning on turning it into the “server room.” We have a centralized media server to hold all of our recorded TV, music, photos etc. In addition, this room will house the Ethernet switch and the cable connection for the whole house. I’m thinking we’ll put a small desk with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse in this room for fiddlin’ with the servers. In addition, I would like to put up a wall of pegboard on one wall in this room. The switch, wire routing, etc will be affixed to the pegboard but there will also be plenty of room for electronic tools.

Stefan did a good bit of plumbing these last couple weekends as well. We finsihed up the sink drains which are routed down the chimney and into the basement plumbed. We also cut the floor and are nearly ready to get it set in place. We water tested all the PVC below the floor but we need to pull water supply to the washer/dryer unit before we close up the floor once and for all.

We also did some good thinking on how to get the electric and ethernet pulled in the den. We bought this fun flexy drill bit that will be terrifying to use I’m sure.

This image doesn’t do it justice. It’s 54 inches long and flexy. I’ll have to get a picture of the beast in action.

Since the 15/16 was the last weekend before Christmas, I made lots and lots of cookies. I love an excuse to bake!

I also put up a wreath. Not having any decorations was driving me crazy. The house may have once looked haunted but no more. We are festive!

I’m also going to go full speed ahead on getting things organized in the piano/dining/entry and in the basement. We need to have things picked up and cleared out before we can get much done in the way of insulation. Next weekend we will be with Stefan’s family in upstate New York so don’t be expecting a post.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Sarah