A Little Elbow Grease

For the last two years I have thought that the chandelier in the solarium looked dull and yellowed due to age. It's probably the only light fixture that remains that was original to the house, so we have never even considered replacing it, but it wasn't all that pretty. The previous owner was very energy conscious so all of the bulbs in this house were/are compact florescent, so there are many bulbs that we still haven't changed since moving in. One of the lights in the chandelier finally went out the other night. I dragged a ladder over and looked inside the chandelier and the scene wasn't pretty. We took the bowl of the chandelier off and immersed it in a sink of hot ammonia water and rubbed gently and viola!



It's all sparkly and pretty again! This is definitely going to be added to the spring cleaning chores from now on.

Hoosier Style Cabinet Update

Chris finally got some information on the cabinet that we ordered for the kitchen. It turns out that the factory lost every single purchase order on one day in May and it happens to be the day that we ordered ours. Their only recourse was to wait 6-8 weeks for people to start calling and then build the furniture. They said that they would put a rush on our piece, but we still won't have it before the beginning of September.

Here is a photo of the cabinet:

I looked at Hoosier reproductions, but they just didn't suit our needs. I think this will work out beautifully. We didn't order it in this two tone color scheme, ours is all one color and it will be a color called antique glow, not too red, not too yellow, a nice medium natural wood color. That is... if we ever get it.

Weekend Work

Since we are at a standstill on our current project we decided to work on our friend and fellow old house dweller Stephen S.'s house. He is actually selling this old house to move into a different old house that has a couple of barns and a babbling brook, so he is contractually obligated to finish a few projects before the closing. When I say a few, I mean more like 15 projects that require advanced woodworking skills and lots and lots of time. Since Chris and I are not skilled labor, we just painted clapboards while Stephen S. did the hard stuff. It was actually a very pleasant day. Much better than Sunday...

On Sunday we decided to take the cook nook light fixture down and paper the ceiling even though we don't have much light in the room without it. Chris would just have to finish his business in the kitchen before sundown. The cook nook is a perfectly rectangular area and we only had to cut around the light fixture, so it was going to be super easy and fast. Of course, it wasn't either of those things and we did eventually get all of the paper stuck to the ceiling, but it isn't our best work so I'll spare you a photo until it gets painted.

Here is a photo of Stephen's house:

Nice, eh? I've known him since 2001 when I first moved to Albany. He was my boss at the time so we stuck to polite conversation like the painstaking stripping of the entire house down to bare wood, reproduction of the porch apron, repair and reproduction of any missing or broken wood work, new storm sashes, new working shutters and of course re-painting the whole thing. I still think he was crazy, but you can't deny what beautiful work he's done.

No Progress. None at all...

We are now at the part of the kitchen project where time has slowed to nearly a stop. I am spending 8 hours a day on phone and email trying to get 1. Light Fixture Parts and 2. Hoosier Style Cabinet.

Unfortunately the light fixture situation has degenerated into me threatening to have 'my attorney' deal with them. I don't mention that 'my attorney' is my sister who practices criminal law and knows more about heroin than light fixtures or sales contracts. To back up my whole attorney thing I also call Visa and file complaints with anyone who has an online form, then I get back to the threatening emails. I like to write them two or three times before I send them out. My high school English teacher would be so proud. Finally, one of my threatening emails has gotten through and they vowed that they would replace the whole fixture if they couldn't get me the right parts this time. I'll believe it when it's lighting up the kitchen.

Chris has actually been handling the cabinet because it's a local vendor and he can go over there and intimidate them at lunchtime. OK, intimidation isn't actually necessary because they are super nice and they're trying to figure out exactly where the cabinet is and they've already waived the delivery fee and I'm hoping it takes a little longer and they'll throw in some dining chairs for our trouble.

Right now all of our dishes are on the dining table gathering dust and animal hair and you know that we're not wiping them off before we use them... even if we have company, and my mom and bonus dad are coming out for a visit later this week and I was hoping to get the dishes in the cabinet before they showed up so they would presume that said dishes were clean. Hopefully they won't read this before they show up.

He's a Maniac...

...Maniac on the... ceiling?

I think Chris' desperation for this project to be over has peaked. Today after work he finished painting the ceiling:

And installed the sink flange:


And installed the disposer:
And now we have a functioning kitchen sink!
I accused Chris of beginning to enjoy home improvement projects, but he assured me that this is not the case. He is merely desperate to have a working kitchen again.

Until the missing light fixture parts and the new updated Hoosier cabinet come in, there's really nothing more that we can do. I have some organization projects planned for this weekend in the event that the parts don't arrive. Maybe I could straighten up some other rooms of the house that have been neglected for too long... nah.

Magic Painting

While I am sitting in a clean, climate controlled, whirpool tub-having, hotel suite (I was upgraded this week), Chris is slaving away at home to finish the painting on the kitchen ceiling. He says that the photos don't do it justice, but I think they look pretty AWESOME!





The paint is a specialty metallic finish that I searched far and wide for. It's allegedly very difficult to roll on because you have to finish the strokes all in the same direction so that the metal particles are all lined up. Chris is applying it with a brush to avoid this and he said that it's taking him about 4 minutes per square. That's either dedication to a job well done or desperation for this project to be over, I can't decide which.

Kitchen Lighting

This is the new fixture over the sink. We didn't have a fixture there before, so this is a very exciting thing.


This is the only good thing that has happened with the light fixtures for the room. When the island fixture arrived, there was much excitement, but then we discovered that the shades were broken. This is easy enough to fix, manufacturer's deal with this all the time. I sent an email and they assured me that the new shades were on their way. Great! Now we can install the fixture and just wait for the shades, no need to send the whole thing back. I assemble the fixture and strip the wires and Chris was standing on the island waiting and then I realized (yep, I didn't realize until this point, sad, I know) that the mounting bracket and chains that the fixture are supposed to hang from are missing. I sent another email and I got the same response, but still no parts. It's been two and a half weeks and this is holding up the whole punch list and I would totally call them up and give them what for, but no one picks up the phone there, they just have a recording that says to submit questions via email! Maybe they've had too many talking to's in the past. I am definitely going to send a semi-harsh email now!