The House on the Hill

How to Update a Post Lamp in 137* Simple Steps: Part Two

July 1, 2013

When we last left the post, we had just placed the new fixture on before having to run for cover. After several crazy storms and lots of rain, we were ready to continue on with our process. Well, Kyle was ready to forge ahead while I spent the weekend in Charleston.

So where were we? Ah, yes:

Step 22: Drill new holes into post

Step 23: Screw lamp to post

Step 24: Decide to actually update the lamp post as well

Step 25: Clean post

Step 26: Scrub post with a wire brush

Step 27: Cover and tape fixture to protect it from paint

Step 28: Rake leaves and other debris away from lamp post.

Step 29: Spray paint post with color of choice

Step 30: Realize it may have been easier to paint before installing the new light

Step 31: Show wife finished product upon her return home (she won’t notice by herself because her drive was far too traumatic)

Step 32: Wife: realize your husband skipped Step 28. Decide not to say anything and just enjoy the finished product

Step 33: Skip steps 34-137*…they’re unimportant (and they don’t exist)

That’s it! Easy peasy, right? The hardest part of this project was just picking the paint color for the post. Did we want to keep the black? Satin nickel to match the fixture? A pop of color?

Drum roll, please………………………………………….

TA-DA!

We decided to go with a light blue because it goes well with our future plans for the curb appeal of the house – and no, I don’t mean painting the rest of the ground cover blue. Right now it kind of stands out a little more than I’d like it to, but I’m confident that once the rest of the pieces fall into place the lamp post will feel right at home.

Weekend Round Up

June 25, 2013

We had a crazy busy weekend last weekend both socially and around the house. I wanted to pop in and tell you about some of the projects we worked on between birthday dinners, weddings, and naps (hey, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do). Warning: this is a photo-less post because I’m lazy and also because I didn’t take any pictures yet. So sue me.

The biggest thing we did over the weekend was add hardware and put the drawers in the kitchen! The drawers ended up being a huge pain because we didn’t get the second coat of paint on before our glorious Southern summer humidity showed up. We ended up having to wait for a break in the weather since the humidity made the paint thick and sticky (I know there’s a dirty joke there but let’s just leave it, shall we?).

Here’s a rundown of our other weekend accomplishments:

-Hung new interior door to cat closet. Three down, One to go! Downstairs at least….

-Added trim to bench, caulked, painted. We’re having the seat cushion made so we’re waiting to get the call that it’s done before we do the reveal!

-Lamp post. Actually, we didn’t do anything with the lamp post. We do have the new light on and working but haven’t been able to paint the post yet because of all of these crazy pop up storms.

We also planned out a few more projects to tackle in the next month or so but I’ll talk about those another day. For now, I want to give you guys a chance to win big! Everyone loves free money, right? Well, Michelle over at 4 Men 1 Lady has teamed up with Bounty and the Home Depot to giveaway a $250 Home Depot gift card. Click here to see how to enter to win!

Forward Progress

June 19, 2013

Several projects are being wrapped up this week and I just wanted to share a little sneak peak…

That’s all you get right now – I know, such a tease!

Tales from the Dining Room

June 17, 2013

Ah yes, the dining room. The one room in our house that has zero furniture and zero decor. I promise we do own a dining room table and chairs but it’s currently been living either on our deck so we can eat outside when the nights are nice or in the garage awaiting a good sanding and either a stain or clear coat. The table and chairs are on the agenda for the next two weeks at which point they’ll live in the dining room until we build our new table many moons from now. The point of this post isn’t to ramble about how empty the space is though, I promise!

So why the heck am I talking about a room that has no furniture and other than a couple of coats of paint hasn’t been touched at all? This is why:

I understand why it was there, really I do – this room was technically a sitting room/sunroom (uhhhh shouldn’t it have more than one window, then?) which would absolutely call for a fan. It makes more sense to us though to use it as the dining room and this fan had to go. I guess for this particular space we just weren’t fan fans (har, har).

Then came the first dilemma: ain’t no way I was going to shell out over $100 for a light fixture. I wanted something large that would fill the space that also had some sort of interesting detail. I’m not really a chandelier person and everything I loved seemed to be some sort of oversized drum light. Unfortunately for me, these all came in around the $400 mark. Ha. Hahaha. Hahahahahahahaha. No. Nobody pays that much for a light in this house! Not no way, not no how.

One day, we were strolling through this wonderful kingdom of goods. It’s a magical place called Costco. Our mission was to buy chicken, beef, and coffee but then we took a hard right down a mystery aisle and there she was, shining in all of her glory. She was large and in charge and with a price tag of $80, I was sold.

We loaded her up and took her home alongside our meats and a cup of froyo.

Unfortunately for us, this was the most frustrating lighting change to date. Let’s run through the events day by day, shall we?

Day One: Find light. Buy light. Get home at 8pm. Cut the power. Remove the ceiling fan. Discover there is no electrical box in the ceiling to house the wires. Cap the wires. Turn power back on. Call it a night.

Day Two: Go to Home Depot to get electrical housing. Cut the power. Install the light. Turn the power back on. Admire light in all of its glory. Play a little game called “Which Switch is the Right Switch?” – This switch? No. This switch? No. This switch? No. This switch? No. Discover that light does not respond to any of the eleven switches that are in the kitchen/dining area. Unscrew bulb. Call it a night.

Day Three: Play with kitchen switches. Figure out that most of them work flood lights outside. Still leaves one mystery switch.

Isn’t home ownership fun?! Our new plan, whether temporary or permanent we don’t quite know yet, is to install a pull chain. Stay tuned for more adventures in lighting and a before and after showing off our new lovely lighting solution.

How to update a post lamp in 137* simple steps: Part One

June 10, 2013

*This number is totally outrageous. Actually, I prefer to say that it’s an extraordinary use of hyperbole. In reality, it should only take a normal person a handful of steps but that’s not how we do things ’round these parts.

Just to give you a little idea of what we were working with, here is our “before” photo:

Step 1) Send your husband out to do the dirty work (aka installing a new post lamp)

Step 2) Be informed that the screws are rusted

Step 3) Apply liquid wrench

Step 4) Wait approximately a month…not because it’s required but because you’re lazy…or the weather won’t cooperate…or you’re lazy

Step 5) Sporadically decide to once again try installing new post lamp

Step 6) Send husband out to do the dirty work…supervise this time

Step 7) Turn off power so you don’t kill yourself or your husband

Step 8) Hammer screwdriver into old screws to create new screw heads and remove screws

Step 9) Disconnect old lamp

Step 10) Attempt to figure out how in the world the lamp was connected in the first place

Step 11) Attempt to fish out wires

Step 12) Decide to get rid of the massive, unruly vine bush thing that’s in your way

Step 13) Put on amazing floral gloves

Step 14) Unwind branches to remove – use saw when needed

Step 15) Admire your handy work

Step 16) Actually figure out how in the world the lamp was connected in the first place

Step 17) Apply more liquid wrench to the screws around the outlet, do not wait a month to dry this time

Step 18) Actually fish out wires

Step 19) Remove old crusty lamp

Step 20) Place bright, shiny, new lamp on post

Step 21) Grab your junk and run inside because it’s now pouring down rain and oh yeah, there’s a ton of lightning. too.

To be continued when the weather cooperates and we can finish this little project…which is unfortunately not today but probably later this week or this weekend.

Accidental Discovery

June 6, 2013

We recently added another item to our to-do list for the downstairs – new baseboard moulding. This wasn’t really something we had planned to do but we accidentally found out that it will completely change the feel of the space. How did we happen upon this discovery? I’ll share the story.

Remember the closet project I was working on? Well, we ended up having to order moulding to trim out the bench. It finally arrived and I immediately took it out of the box so I could bask in its awesomeness. Then, I had to figure out where to put it until we were ready to cut it and add it to the bench. Our closets are currently packed to the rafters and our garage isn’t much better. Our dining room on the other hand is 100% empty except for 2 boxes that we haven’t unpacked yet, so I just went and plopped it down on the floor.

Just look at it:

Apologies for the iPhone quality photo but I was way too pumped to go grab my fancy schmancy new camera. What do you think? I think it amps up the space and makes it look sooooooo so so much better. Of course it would be great if we could also replace that tile floor but that’s one of those projects that’s a couple of years down the road.

I’m stoked about this project since it’s something so small that I think will make a huge impact. Once we wrap up the kitchen and the hall closet, hopefully we’ll get to start on this! Speaking of, I’m hoping the closet reveal is just right around the corner – we’re just waiting on our custom cushion now.

A Mini Reveal

May 30, 2013

The seemingly never ending kitchen project is still underway but I do have a teeny tiny reveal to do for you. We have been super lazy lately and not much house stuff has been going on which is why I haven’t been posting as much. We have tons of half finished projects but all we really want to do after work is be lazy and for now that’s fine with me.

Anywho, back to the kitchen. It wasn’t terribly long ago when our cozy little cooking space looked like this:

I’ll admit, it’s not the world’s ugliest kitchen but that brown just wasn’t cutting it. It made the entire room feel dark and dank – not really descriptors you want for the place you prepare your food. With a little paint and a lot of patience (and time), our kitchen now looks a little more like this:

Ahhhhhh, so much better. Is it perfect? Heck no! I’ve noticed some oops spots on some of the cabinet doors and we still have some touch up painting to do on the walls but for now, I’ll take it!

A couple of things to notice:

1) Uhhhh we don’t have drawers. I mean, we have drawers but they’re not finished. We decided to do those last but they’ve really just been hanging out in the garage (oh, oh, oh) for the longest time. Patience, grasshopper. I promise they’ll be done this week…weekend? Eh, whatever.

2) Take a look back at the awful fluorescent monstrosity in the “before” photo. Notice anything different about it now? We painted the mess out of that sucker. We’d eventually like to do recessed lighting but this is the best temporary solution we could come up with. I’ve got to say, it makes the light almost disappear. That’s a big emphasis on “almost.”

That’s all I’ve got for now, friends! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go back to cuddling with this cutie:

Back in Action

May 24, 2013

Wowzers, sorry about being MIA! I’ve been pretty exhausted this week and we had a lot going on. I figured I would check in and give you guys a status report on some of our projects:

Closet:

I’m nearing the end on the closet transformation! We have to order trim and our seat cushion but other than that all I have left to do is build the box to house our shoes. Here’s what it looks like as of last night:

I haven’t decided if I’m going to keep it all white or if I want to break it up with some gray or add some architectural detail with beadboard. I’m going to live with it like it is for a couple of weeks and see how I feel about it then. The photos on the shelf are only there temporarily. The plan is to get some baskets like these that match the ones in our laundry room to use for storing phone chargers and other random items that are otherwise homeless. So far, I’m really loving how it’s turning out!

Kitchen:

We started hanging our cabinet doors back up last night! We still have quite a few to hang tonight and the drawers still need to be painted but it’s a far cry from where we were at not too long ago. Here’s a look at the built in pantry – only half nekkid now instead of the full monty:

Other:

I hinted a few posts back about another project we had going on while we were waiting for the doors to dry. We decided to replace all of our brown slab doors with these that we bought at Home Depot.

We started hanging them the other night and were having some major issues because 1) the hinges weren’t in the exact right spot and 2) one of the doors wasn’t the right size (whoops!). Our plan is to go ahead and get those hung this weekend and then paint them as we have time.

The last thing we’ve been working on, one piece at a time, is our front porch. Right now it’s like a cave so our plan is to lighten it up a bit. Here’s a sketch of what we’re kind of going for.

I hesitated to show this – I didn’t want anyone to feel inferior because my art skills are so incredibly amazing, but in the end I decided I didn’t want to deprive the world of such talent.

All of this basically means that we should have lots of reveal posts coming up within the next couple of weeks…not to mention we’ll (finally) be moving our kitchen stuff over and cooking real food again, woo!

Closet Progress

May 19, 2013

We had a whirlwind weekend full of spending time with friends and getting some much need rest – it was great but also meant that we didn’t make as much progress as we would have liked, especially since Kyle was sick pretty much all day today. While he was camped out on the sofa, I decided to finally get busy working on the closet makeover that I started a week ago. I still have a long way to go but wanted to show you guys the progress I made tonight:

I decided that instead of a closet with ugly brown bi-fold doors, it makes the most sense for us to have a “landing spot” to toss shoes and hang our keys. I really wanted to use the laundry room for that but it’s too small already and adding hanging coats and a place for shoes would make it unbearably cramped. We already have to do this weird tango when we’re both coming in or out!

This is just part one – building a bench where we can sit and put on/take off our shoes. I’ll also be building a wooden crate that will slide in so our shoes will be hidden and I won’t have to worry about tripping over them.

This project really tested my skills and patience what with it being the first thing I’ve ever built besides a desk and bookcase from Walmart. It was also my first time using any kind of saw and I’ve got to say, I’m already feeling it. I’m sure I’ll be sore all over tomorrow but for now I’m incredibly proud of myself for doing this about 99% by myself. I’m also super thankful for the tiny bit of help I did get from Kyle though or else I probably would have ended up sobbing in a corner.

Now I’m going to reward myself with a cookie and an episode of Deadliest Catch.

D-O-N-E

May 17, 2013

That’s right, we are DONE painting our cabinets! Of course we still have to tackle the drawers but there are far fewer of those and they’re much smaller. I plan on posting again later today but was too excited not to share the news! It’s recommended that you let them dry for about a week before hanging but we’re going to see how they feel on Monday or Tuesday and go from there.

This project has been a pain but it’s going to be so worth it once we get those pretties into place!