Spontaneous Bustion

Here's what's been happening around here lately.

A few nights ago I was minding my own business, making dinner, when I heard a crash from the other room. I thought maybe one of my kids had crashed into something, and possibly gotten hurt, but I couldn't imagine what they ran into that would make that sound. So I went into the living room, crying out, "What was that?!"

Here's (some of) what I saw, although it took a minute to register:

What on earth?!

The glass on the left side of our glass-topped computer desk just...exploded! Nobody was sitting at the desk, or even very close to it. It wasn't hot or cold (and it's tempered glass anyway). It just spontaneously shattered! There were bits of glass in about a three-yard radius from the desk.

When we all recovered from the shock I told the kids to clean up while I finished making dinner.

Ryan sweeps up what he can.

After hearing Ryan cut himself a few times I gave up on dinner and went back to help out. (Very minor, although no less irritating, cuts; nothing to worry about.) The living room carpet got the best vacuuming job it's had in a long time, I'm sure.

And now the desk looks like this:

We will have to figure out what to put there to replace the glass. And, as in algebra, whatever we do to one side we should probably do to the other side.

So that was one thing.

The next thing wasn't so spontaneous—quite the opposite, actually—but it's been interesting to see. We have a metal roof, which is nice because it will last longer than shingles will. Well, in the winter we get lots of snow, and then when the day warms up all of the snow slides off of the front (west) side of the roof into a big heap on the driveway and our front porch. (Usually after we've already shoveled.)

But for some reason it doesn't fall all the way off of the back side of the roof. (Probably because we don't have to shovel back there.)

Well, here is what's been happening this year: The snow on the back (east) side of the roof would start to melt, and it would start to slide down, and then it would freeze up again. So it was creating this wall of ice that hung down from the patio roof.

taken from the inside of my great-room window
If you look closely you can see water dripping from the icicles
(it's really not just dirt on my window—although there is, admittedly, some of that, too).

Here's what it looked like from inside the patio.

I wish I had gotten another picture yesterday morning because on the right side (behind the grill) that sheet of icy snow had finally met up with the snow on the ground. And because of the way it melted every day and then refroze we had layered rows of icicles that looked like shark's teeth. But, alas! Yesterday it finally all came crashing to the ground before I could get another photo.

Now it just looks like this:

This was a much more interesting sight to see:

Well, anyway, that's been the excitement in our house for this week.

The Solution to All My Remodeling Woes

Or
   
Bruce is da Man!

When we last left the big living room project, the light fixture was like this:

one big, messy can of worms

I had wanted to rearrange some light switches in the living room, and one in the hallway/kitchen, so that they made more sense to me. Instead I got the kitchen hallway light pulled out, and couldn't figure out how to even rewire it back the way it originally was. Our friend Daniel came over for a little while to work on it, but had to leave before he could finish it. Fortunately he got the wires put away enough that we could turn the breaker back on and still use our living room light—and the hallway/entry light too! (You may read about it in detail here if you really want to—scroll to about halfway down the post.)

Well, my very manly and amazing husband has been home for a week, and he fixed it all up for me!

In this picture you can see that the wires
already look a lot less messy.

First he got the kitchen/hallway light to work. This included his removing the wire for the three-way switch.

I wanted this to go away.

He did it!

The offending wire—and its switch—lie on the floor
like a snake in death throes.

And look at this!

It lives! It works! It looks fabulous!

After he got the kitchen/hall light working the right way, he moved all the wires around to the way I wanted them to be. Because he is awesome! 

Can you actually see what happened here?
It's pretty cool.

Here you can see how he switched the switches (well, the wiring). 

All of this planning and moving of the lighting wires did have an unexpected side-effect on me. For the entire time we've lived in this house I really have flipped the right-hand switch when I came through the front door and wanted the living room light on. If I was already in the house I knew that that switch would turn on the outside lights; that was not a problem. And the other two—the entry and kitchen hall switches—were guesswork every single time.

Then I labeled them so I could rewire them. And then I left it like that for a few weeks, and learned which switch switched what. Now I have to relearn them. But, as this arrangement is much more intuitive, and I am a clever girl, I think I'll get it pretty quickly. If not, I will just have to write it all on the wall.

Anyway, my amazing husband fixed the mess I made of the kitchen/hall light, and he rewired the living room switches the way I wanted them to be, and he put in the new LED light fixtures I bought for the hall lights, and he installed the new flat switches that I like. And then he went to the other side of the living room and put a flat switch there. And then he put flat switches into the great room too! (I had replaced two switches in there, but there were three more to go.)

Bruce happily switches the light switches.

AND, as if all of that were not enough, Bruce also replaced the thermo-couple in the great room fireplace, so now we have heat in that room again! (I did not break the fireplace! Although at first I thought I did because it quit working when I turned off the breaker to replace the light switches. This made no sense, because I'd been playing with the breakers for days and the fireplace survived it. This bad thermo-couple really, truly was not my fault!)

Jessica enjoys the fruits of Bruce's labors.

So this past week Bruce got here, fixed everything I messed up and other things I might possibly have messed up in my future remodeling efforts, and made life thoroughly enjoyable for me. 'Cause Bruce is da Man!

Which one? Which one?

I've been looking at upholstery fabrics for my living room. Because, hey! If I can tear out walls, refinish a piano, and do electrical wiring, then surely I can reupholster my furniture, right? That, and Bruce worked in an upholstery shop for a while...

Here is my living room (and my kids) in its natural state. 
Just a little messy. Although the books piled up everywhere
are not normal. One day I will build those shelves
and put the books back where they belong. 
Why do I get myself into these big, hairy projects?
(Answer: I can't seem to help myself.)

When I asked Bruce if he thought we could reupholster the couches he said we could, and it would be fun to work together on it. When I asked what kinds of colors to look for he surprised me by saying, "Couches should be brown." He didn't elaborate, so I don't know why he thinks that, or if that's really what he thinks vs. that being a thought of the moment. We have never, except for an old hand-me-down when we were newlyweds, had a brown couch.

But, if he wanted brown, I could look for brown. And I did. And I didn't find many that I loved; they were OK, but they were so...brown! (Blues were drawing my attention, though.)

And then I saw this fabulous, multi-colored elephant fabric:

This one I love! (Now you think There's no accounting for taste...)

So I tried it with several colors: browns, golds, blues, greens, and even plummy-purples. I had a hard time finding browns that I really liked, but I found a couple that were OK.

I also found this "Aegean Blue" color that I liked pretty well.

But all of this fabric will be for a very large, squashy-style sofa set, and I was afraid that either the blue or the brown on every piece would be overwhelming. (Obviously I'm not going to do an entire couch—let alone three big pieces—in the elephants; that might be a bit much.) But what if I did one piece in a contrasting color? Aha! Blue couches and a brown chair, or the other way around? Hm. So on Friday I emailed the swatch pics to Bruce, and he liked what I came up with. He said, "Order it." Which did not solve the blue/brown question. My kids and I finally decided brown couch, brown love-seat, blue chair.

Even at a low, low price-tag of $600 to reupholster a couch, a love-seat, a chair, an ottoman, make a cornice-board, and get fabric for curtains, that was a little nerve-wracking, so I looked at more swatches first. And I came up with two sets that I liked.

1.

The west wall is the wall behind the curtains. The rest of the walls will be a lighter variation of the curtain color.

This first set was my favorite, for color. I felt like the dark brown really made the colors in the elephant fabric pop.


2.

Oooh! But I like this, too. It makes everything just a little brighter. And the texture of the brown kind of makes me think of elephant skin, which is a fun elephant element. (Not that I'm trying to make my living room into an elephant...)

Another thing is that the colors are deceptive when viewed on the computer. If the picture is at the top or bottom of the screen it looks darker than if it's at eye level. If the room is dark the pictures look different than they do when the room is light. How could I decide?

I put it on facebook for a vote, and I also asked all my kids as they wandered through the room. Out of fourteen votes cast (fifteen if you count my vote) only three were for the lighter fabric. Michael—who voted on facebook before he talked to me about it—chose for the lighter one on the facebook poll, but in person he told me he liked the darker color better; he just liked the elephant-hide texture of the lighter fabric. But the real vote that decided me was cast by Bruce: he likes the darker color—partially because we have cream colored carpet in the living room and he likes the idea of the high contrast.

So I held my breath and pushed the "order" button. I've never spent so much on fabric all at once. Of course, I've never bought fifty yards of fabric all at once either. Anyway, I put in the order, and then I instantly wondered if I should have chosen the other brown, and kept waffling all day long. >sigh<

Well, if I hate any—or all—of it, I can return it for a refund. There is that. But I hope that we love it!

Cliff Hanger

The shelf remodel project continues.

As you will recall, in last week's (two weeks ago?) episode, I had torn out a lot of sheetrock, some 2x4 studs, and the hallway shelves, finishing here:

Here's what's happened in the intervening time:

First I took out more sheetrock...

...exposing some wiring.

If you look in the right corner you'll see some big, thick red and white wires; they are the wiring to the thermostat. (This makes me think that those little-bitty blue and white wires I found a week or so ago are not for the ceiling heat. Hm.) Right next to the red and white wires you can see a big, hefty, black wire. That is important later on in this saga.

In any case, all the demolition in the hallway is done.

Now for the living room:

Look! A "before" picture!

I am going to tear out some of this wall too. So I drew it in, scored it, and then used a drywall saw to make my nice, clean line. And then the crowbar comes into play.

Marked, cut, and the first hole is knocked out.

And there goes the drywall.

After many, many hours, and several large bags of trash, here is what we have:

from the living room side

from the hallway side
The outlet in the middle of everything is slightly problematic.

That was enough for one day. Then I had to do some thinking, and figure out the rewiring of the outlet. After talking to Bruce, and talking to the nice man at the hardware store, I was pretty sure I could move that outlet to a better spot. So, last Saturday, off goes the power and out come the wall studs.

Lindsey is holding the wire which is now dead. And now I have to hurry because we can't turn the power back on until that is safely connected to something. And Kaylie is having a party in four hours. (Unfortunately I didn't finish until after the party started, but it all went OK anyway.)

Ryan helped me to frame in the opening on the living room side. He was a willing helper, which was good, because I can't hammer nails or drive screws in straight to save my life.

And here is the re-routing of the outlet:

on the hallway side
This day I learned all about junction boxes and splicing wire.

There's the outlet, in its new spot.

Here you can see Kaylie's friends playing video games, looking from the hallway side of the world. (I don't seem to have a pic from the living room side, but it's pretty much the same as a few pictures up—aside from the outlet.)

Since Saturday we've had a few people come over to the house for little things, and they are all so impressed with how open the entryway looks now. And it does! It's cool enough to almost tempt me to leave it like this. Well, with drywall and paint...

But that is not the plan. It was never the plan.

Anyway, I'd spent a week of demolition, hauling, and rebuilding, I just kind of sat around all day Monday. I read. I watched movies. I hung out with my kids. Partly because I wanted a break, and partly because I was working out another brain puzzle: What should I do with my wonky light switches?

In the left-hand picture you see the switches on the wall that I see
every time I come in the living room door. In the right-hand picture you see their wiring.

The switch for the entry hall makes sense. That is a light that shines right inside the front door, and gives light to the stairs that lead to the basement.

The outside light switch (on the right) makes marginal sense; since these are the only switches right inside the door, it's pretty much where you'd expect it to be. Sadly, the outside switch is the one that I automatically want to flip to turn on the living room light. Even after more than a year. (The living room light switch is just around the corner from this set of switches. If you really want to, you can probably see it in one of the earlier pictures.)

The middle switch for the kitchen hall light makes no sense whatsoever. The kitchen hall light is about five feet away from the entry hall light, and it has a switch on that end of the world too, so it works both from the kitchen side and from the entry side. This seems unnecessary. In fact, it is unnecessary because I only ever turn it on from the kitchen side.

My big plan is to 1. move the living room light switch around the corner, making it the switch I automatically want to turn on when I come into the house. 2. Move the outside light switch over one space, so it takes the place of the redundant kitchen hall switch. 3. Get rid of the kitchen hall switch that's in the entry, and only have that light wired to the switch that's near the kitchen.

So a couple days ago I shut off the power to those switches (also killing my living room light), and pulled the switches out to see what things looked like in there. I had talked to the nice man at the hardware store, and I was pretty sure I could do this. Then I pulled the kitchen hall light down and had a look in there. I disconnected the wires from the light fixture, connected the ones I thought were right, and then turned on the breaker.

No sparks!

No tripping the breaker!

No light.

I rearranged the wiring and tried it again. Now the light would turn on, but neither of the switches would turn it off. I tried again. And again, and again. For three hours! Up and down the step-ladder, working above my head, going to and from the breaker box. I did trip the breaker a couple of times. I did get light a few times, but couldn't turn it off again with either switch. At this point I was wishing I had taken a picture of the wiring before I took it all apart. At this point I would have been ecstatic just to have all the switches working the way they originally did.

Oh, man! I opened up a big can of worms!

Finally I just splayed all the wires away from each other, walked away, and tried not to kick the cat, who was innocent of all of this, for the rest of the day.

Then I called our good friend Daniel Ray, who is good at this stuff, and he came over that evening. He said he's never seen a light wired this way, but he could probably figure it out. Unfortunately his time was limited; he had a meeting to go to. But at least he got the wires safely put away (even though the kitchen hall light wasn't working) so that we could use the living room light again.

And there we sit. I can't close in the wiring until this is fixed somehow.

What will happen in the next episode? Will Loralee get the kitchen hall light to work again? If she does, will she still try to rewire the switches?

Tune in next time...

Polly wanna... ?

I've heard that parrots—pet parrots—when they are lonely or distressed will pull their own feathers out, sometimes all of their feathers.





This is what I did to my front hallway last Saturday:

Yes, when Bruce is away for long stretches of time I start to tear my house apart. Of course, I had been planning to do this ever since we moved in, and chances are that I would have started it all by myself even if Bruce was around. And then I would have wanted him to help me finish the whole project. But since he's not here, I will have to repair the damage myself.

So the plan—part of it—is to expand the hallway bookshelves. These shelves used to be a pantry (with lame-O bi-fold doors), but I had other things in mind for them.

Here you can see that I am, indeed, really bad at before and after pics. This picture is after I had already removed most of the books so I could start on the current project.

When we moved in one of the first things I did was have Michael remove the bi-fold doors so I could put books on those shelves. Unfortunately, since it was  a closet, there are spaces on the sides where books are stacked, but nearly impossible to get at. So the other day we removed the books, and all the junk (including my wrapping-paper boxes) that was under the bottom shelf, and then I removed all the moldings from around the doorway.

Once the moldings were gone I took a hammer and pounded a hole in the wall to see what I would find in there. I knew there'd be a wire because that's where the doorbell box is (to the top left of the closet/shelves).

Can you see the wire inside the hole?

What I didn't expect was to find three wires in there. The brown one is the doorbell; I'm guessing the blue/white ones are for the heating in the ceiling. (Who was the brilliant person that came up with electric, radiant ceiling heaters? Heat rises!) I will have to figure out how to work around those wires. Hm.

Well, after I'd moved all the books, and I'd torn out the moldings, and I had punched a hole in the wall, and I found I was presented with a new puzzle, I needed a break. So I went into the living room where all my books are in totes or in stacks, and I saw our World Book Encyclopedia set. We bought it from the library when they were tired of it, and it's a pretty cool set; beautiful...except for the ubiquitously ugly library stickers.

What do I keep saying about before and after photos?

In my tired and slightly frustrated state of mind I thought, "I wonder if I can remove those stickers. An unsuccessful attempt to take them off couldn't make the books any uglier." Which goes to show you that I was not thinking clearly, because it certainly could have made them look worse. Fortunately they came off pretty easily with a little help from a rag soaked in Goo-Gone. And they really do look a lot nicer. (But, apparently, I didn't take an "after" picture yet, so you will be dying in suspense until later.)

Well, here is the progress on the wall/shelf project:

removing the drywall

All of the outside drywall is gone now, and Ryan did a little cleanup for me. Notice that there are two wall studs right next to each other on the left side (actually on the right side, too) of the opening. I will have to figure out how to remove most of the exposed wood you see. How to get it out without landing it all on my head? Hmm. Time to go remove more stickers from books.

Now most of the inside drywall is gone, and so is one of those 2x4 studs.

With all the studs removed, and all the drywall torn out, I could finally start taking out the shelves and wall cleats. I still have to figure out what to do with some scary-ugly nails that are hanging down from that top board...

And here is where I finished up this afternoon:

Phase One is finished! No shelves! Clean! Ready for a little more demolition...