Showing posts with label electricity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label electricity. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
oh, yeah, there are pictures
the leaks, the plants, the dining room, i forgot about installing the new digital/programmable thermostat, more plants, my sister-in-law and nieces and more flower beds....
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
And now... in other news
After 3 straight weekends at the Lakehouse, I've managed to accomplish a lot. None of this was really on the agenda, but it got accomplished in good spirits anyway:
- Removed 2 of the 4 hornet/wasp nests on the property (need more spray)
- Cut down 99% of the "white trash weed hill/goose throne"
- Patched and skimcoated 1/2 of the dining room wall (and discovered a leak behind the other half, ugh)
- tore down part of the chair rail to remove wallpaper in the dining room and discovered that the scale of the chair rail is much brighter, more open without that piece
- removed the dangerous metal transition piece that jabbed at people's socks between the hall and dining room
- discovered umpteen leaks in the basement (now to find a way to get the plumber to call me back)
- installed new outdoor lighting along the driveway since the low-levels seem to have conked out
- installed the blue property line markers so that when the first snow hits, everyone will be able to tell what's yard and what's driveway
- weeded 1 regular sized and 1 humongously oversized plant beds
- transplanted my grandmother's memorial tree and other plants my mom gave me
- Removed 2 of the 4 hornet/wasp nests on the property (need more spray)
- Cut down 99% of the "white trash weed hill/goose throne"
- Patched and skimcoated 1/2 of the dining room wall (and discovered a leak behind the other half, ugh)
- tore down part of the chair rail to remove wallpaper in the dining room and discovered that the scale of the chair rail is much brighter, more open without that piece
- removed the dangerous metal transition piece that jabbed at people's socks between the hall and dining room
- discovered umpteen leaks in the basement (now to find a way to get the plumber to call me back)
- installed new outdoor lighting along the driveway since the low-levels seem to have conked out
- installed the blue property line markers so that when the first snow hits, everyone will be able to tell what's yard and what's driveway
- weeded 1 regular sized and 1 humongously oversized plant beds
- transplanted my grandmother's memorial tree and other plants my mom gave me
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Things are looking up
This is my best friend's mother's apartment, which is the mirror-image and right next door to mine. She has been living without a hallway light fixture for months now, all because we got a little too excited when renovating her kitchen (the Tiffany-blue walls you can catch a glimpse of and you can see in all it's glory right here: http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/february-jumpstart-2009-entries/how-to-make-over-moms-kitchen-in-one-weekend-february-jumpstart-project-2009-077319
Well, I finally decided to take matters in my own hands this morning while the painters were finishing up at my place. I used the old light fixture from my bedroom (which now has a ceiling fan!) and jerry-rigged the chandelier together using a ceiling bracket and sheer willpower....
In other news, the painters finished.
I have new brushed satin nickel knobs and handles for the kitchen and they look divine w/the wood and new countertops. I'm still tweaking the layout of the bathroom tile, but it's coming together.
It's amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do for the mind and the soul.... I'm ready to sell this place for a profit and move on to bigger and better things (that purr and woof).
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Cool Breeze
On the rocks
We are halfway home, folks. I didn't have candelabra lightbulbs, so just the fan is installed. It's making a ticking noise, so I'll have to investigate further before the final reveal....
All in all? Pretty damn proud of myself.
We are halfway home, folks. I didn't have candelabra lightbulbs, so just the fan is installed. It's making a ticking noise, so I'll have to investigate further before the final reveal....
All in all? Pretty damn proud of myself.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Ooh La La
We have half a ceiling fan in the bedroom of the DC Coop, people! Mind you, I was working alone, so it was difficult for me to remember to take pics each step of the way. For instance, I forgot a "before" shot? And most of the "during" ones too...
To make up for it, I stole another shot of a different light fixture to give you an idea of what I'm working with:
Fabric-covered wires! Not just fabric, but ancient, decrepit fabric that crumbles to the touch and this makes it tres difficult to work with....
Closer:
Quite literally, a hot mess!
Anyway, I needed to figure out a way to rig up a safe, secure ceiling fan mounting bracket up to, well basically a hole in the ceiling. There was a lot of hemming, hawing and trips to the hardware store involved in order to find just the right crossbars and screws and brackets and safety pans and all that jazz:
You can't really tell, but there are 3 layers of stainless steel security action going on up in there....
Eventually, I figured out a way to make it work. And my goodness, I can't believe how secure it is!
Then I just attached the ceiling fan's mounting bracket and motor (with the handy hook thingy that they have in case, like me, you are doin' it dolo) and covered it all with the spiffy coverer thingy:
I'm making it sound really easy. Well, it was and it wasn't. Like with the toilet in this same apartment, I can imagine that it is extremely easy when the basic fixtures of the building are oh, I don't know, from this half of the century? But given the parameters of a pre-war building, it is pretty difficult to come up with work-arounds for these types of things. BUT SOMEHOW I MANAGE. And some days I feel like a genius.
I had to stop working because the next step is to attach the 6 or so blades to the fan motor and I was very dehydrated since I had to cut the power to the whole apartment (all wired to the same breaker... ah yes, yet another charming feature), that meant no lights, no air conditioning. But I feel very happy with what was accomplished so far.
Still working on getting the cement patch level, spread another thin layer on today. The light color looks so much better than the old dirty charcoal gray. IF ONLY I HAD KNOWN. Why I can't take a picture of it is beyond me.
I wiped all of the cabinet doors in the kitchen down with ammonia to get rid of the stickiness, it seems to be working. Someone came and took the old 4 foot long laminate countertop (posted on craigslist)! And someone else took the humongous, immobile chifforobe! I love craigslist so much. Helping people, helping me. Win-win, I say.
Well, if I were reading this, I would stop due to the lack of pictures. I'm sorry, I know I need to work on that. Here is one from over 2 years ago, my darling kitty who I miss so much, it hurts. I'm working very hard on honoring her by adopting soon:
To make up for it, I stole another shot of a different light fixture to give you an idea of what I'm working with:
Fabric-covered wires! Not just fabric, but ancient, decrepit fabric that crumbles to the touch and this makes it tres difficult to work with....
Closer:
Quite literally, a hot mess!
Anyway, I needed to figure out a way to rig up a safe, secure ceiling fan mounting bracket up to, well basically a hole in the ceiling. There was a lot of hemming, hawing and trips to the hardware store involved in order to find just the right crossbars and screws and brackets and safety pans and all that jazz:
You can't really tell, but there are 3 layers of stainless steel security action going on up in there....
Eventually, I figured out a way to make it work. And my goodness, I can't believe how secure it is!
Then I just attached the ceiling fan's mounting bracket and motor (with the handy hook thingy that they have in case, like me, you are doin' it dolo) and covered it all with the spiffy coverer thingy:
I'm making it sound really easy. Well, it was and it wasn't. Like with the toilet in this same apartment, I can imagine that it is extremely easy when the basic fixtures of the building are oh, I don't know, from this half of the century? But given the parameters of a pre-war building, it is pretty difficult to come up with work-arounds for these types of things. BUT SOMEHOW I MANAGE. And some days I feel like a genius.
I had to stop working because the next step is to attach the 6 or so blades to the fan motor and I was very dehydrated since I had to cut the power to the whole apartment (all wired to the same breaker... ah yes, yet another charming feature), that meant no lights, no air conditioning. But I feel very happy with what was accomplished so far.
Still working on getting the cement patch level, spread another thin layer on today. The light color looks so much better than the old dirty charcoal gray. IF ONLY I HAD KNOWN. Why I can't take a picture of it is beyond me.
I wiped all of the cabinet doors in the kitchen down with ammonia to get rid of the stickiness, it seems to be working. Someone came and took the old 4 foot long laminate countertop (posted on craigslist)! And someone else took the humongous, immobile chifforobe! I love craigslist so much. Helping people, helping me. Win-win, I say.
Well, if I were reading this, I would stop due to the lack of pictures. I'm sorry, I know I need to work on that. Here is one from over 2 years ago, my darling kitty who I miss so much, it hurts. I'm working very hard on honoring her by adopting soon:
Thursday, October 23, 2008
It's Electric
I pay close attention to the details on some things. One project that I wanted to do in my place for a long time was to change all of the outlets from the original 2 prong, ungrounded receptacles to the 3 prong grounded outlets. Also, some were painted shut, non-functional, dirty, dingy, a thousand shades other than white. I wanted all white to go with the extra-large smooth plates I bought years ago (I changed all of the lightswitches a couple of years ago, oh why don't I have any pictures of that). Pictures. They are worth a thousand words, right?
EXAMPLE OUTLET BEFORE:
EXAMPLE OUTLET AFTER:
The reason I waited so long to change outlets - the apartment next door to me (owned by my best friend's mom) is inextricably/inexplicably wired to mine. So my outlet is powered by her breaker box and vice versa. Kinda crazy. Also, with the cloth wiring and the fact that you have to be 100% SURE that there is no current running through the wire before you even think about touching it (uh, yes, I do know this from personal experience. In this case, since my breaker box does not control this one outlet, I got semi-electrocuted. Duh. I am okay though. We worked it out and she turned off her power so I could change it. Took me 10 minutes.) With outlets you can't be 100% absolutely sure unless you have an electrical current tester/sensor.
With light switches you can be pretty sure that if the light's off when you flip the breaker switch, that there is no power running through the wires at the light source.... Does that make sense?
Oh goodie, here is a picture that includes the new white lightswitch/cover in the bedroom:
Unfortunately, you can also see that pile o' stuff I tried to shove out of every other picture I took on the day I decided to "stage" the apartment to showcase how much room/light there is for when I sell it. Well, it also happened to be the day before I officially moved out and stuff was everywhere.
You can kinda blurrily see the living room lightswitch here:
I've always loved how the living room and bedroom colors complement each other from the doorways on either end. See:
Before I changed them all, there were some black light switches, some almond, some painted all nasty.... Just a hot mess. Take this one outlet cover as an example of how gross it is when it's been painted over and over again:
Like, a thousand coats of paint and just plain crusty!
Stepping it up a notch, I wanted the bathroom outlet to be up to code before I sell it. Since it is in a wet area it needs a GFCI outlet (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter). You know, for when you are blowdrying your hair and you accidentally drop the blowdryer in the toilet? This outlet will save your life and your circuitry by stopping the current of electricity in its tracks. Don't worry, you can safely turn it back on again once you've fished your blowdryer out of the toilet, unplugged it and made sure to cut back on the caffeine and crack.
This is what I was working with in the bathroom BEFORE:
Yes, that's right! The second outlet was painted completely shut! I can't even begin to tell you in how many ways this outlet was wrong.... I was a little bit scared to tackle this project. But I took several deep breaths, tested the sh#t out of the old outlet and went forth and replaced it:
GFCI, baby!
EXAMPLE OUTLET BEFORE:
EXAMPLE OUTLET AFTER:
The reason I waited so long to change outlets - the apartment next door to me (owned by my best friend's mom) is inextricably/inexplicably wired to mine. So my outlet is powered by her breaker box and vice versa. Kinda crazy. Also, with the cloth wiring and the fact that you have to be 100% SURE that there is no current running through the wire before you even think about touching it (uh, yes, I do know this from personal experience. In this case, since my breaker box does not control this one outlet, I got semi-electrocuted. Duh. I am okay though. We worked it out and she turned off her power so I could change it. Took me 10 minutes.) With outlets you can't be 100% absolutely sure unless you have an electrical current tester/sensor.
With light switches you can be pretty sure that if the light's off when you flip the breaker switch, that there is no power running through the wires at the light source.... Does that make sense?
Oh goodie, here is a picture that includes the new white lightswitch/cover in the bedroom:
Unfortunately, you can also see that pile o' stuff I tried to shove out of every other picture I took on the day I decided to "stage" the apartment to showcase how much room/light there is for when I sell it. Well, it also happened to be the day before I officially moved out and stuff was everywhere.
You can kinda blurrily see the living room lightswitch here:
I've always loved how the living room and bedroom colors complement each other from the doorways on either end. See:
Before I changed them all, there were some black light switches, some almond, some painted all nasty.... Just a hot mess. Take this one outlet cover as an example of how gross it is when it's been painted over and over again:
Like, a thousand coats of paint and just plain crusty!
Stepping it up a notch, I wanted the bathroom outlet to be up to code before I sell it. Since it is in a wet area it needs a GFCI outlet (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter). You know, for when you are blowdrying your hair and you accidentally drop the blowdryer in the toilet? This outlet will save your life and your circuitry by stopping the current of electricity in its tracks. Don't worry, you can safely turn it back on again once you've fished your blowdryer out of the toilet, unplugged it and made sure to cut back on the caffeine and crack.
This is what I was working with in the bathroom BEFORE:
Yes, that's right! The second outlet was painted completely shut! I can't even begin to tell you in how many ways this outlet was wrong.... I was a little bit scared to tackle this project. But I took several deep breaths, tested the sh#t out of the old outlet and went forth and replaced it:
GFCI, baby!
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