long weekends and projects around the house

The day has finally come, we replaced our upstairs hallway light fixture!

You may recall this happened:

It happened Aug. 16, 2013 as I was finishing the last bit of painting over the home office door. I backed up into the light fixture.

Even though I knew it was there and I had been carefully avoiding it every single time I climbed up or down the step-stool.

Until this time.

Since then, we just left the two bulbs hanging there. Greg moved in. Greg moved out. We didn't want to replace it during all of that in case there was another incident.

A friend of mine, Julie, works in a lighting store (I actually don't know if it's a store or something else, let's just go with store) and when I asked her if we could replace the globe she bluntly stated it would be cheaper and easier to buy a new fixture. Don't even try to replace it, she wisely stated.

As our anniversary present (fourteen years is animals/gold jewelry, but eighth anniversary is bronze so we're just six years late for that gift, you can read more here) was this:

Bill installed it today. Ta-da!

No more putting my head through it.

Also, because it's a holiday weekend, I'm having homemade ice cream.

I made a few days ago, but I didn't blog about it! Here it is.

Yum! Vanilla. I don't think I can wait any longer...

The hallway light fixture

Remember I was working on the upstairs hall over the summer? Well, Bill and I finished it (almost, why is it always the details that get dragged out?) and as I was finishing the last coat over the last bit of wall over the door to the office, this happened.

I was climbing the step ladder and as I stood upright, the back of my head banged into the the glass globe. Bill had just gone downstairs into the kitchen to get lunch. It sounded worse than it was. He came rushing back upstairs, expecting to see blood-bath. Instead, he found me, still on the ladder, painting. He told me to get down. I refused. I only had one small patch and I just wanted to be finished. Bill exclaimed, "there's broken glass everywhere that needs to be cleaned up, you can finish painting then!" I kept painting. A few seconds later I declared, "Finished!" Then we cleaned up the broken glass.

 And took pictures.

The unfortunate part about the light fixture is that we bought it on clearance from Home Depot. It was exactly what we wanted in the hallway. Now the globe is broken and we cannot find a replacement that looks even remotely similar. 

Back to the hallway. What needs to get finished? Well, finding a new globe of course, and as you go up the stairs there's an access panel that leads to the back of the bathroom shower fixtures, we are making that a chalkboard. It needs to be sanded and the trim needs to be finished. Then there's the ceiling. We spent a day, cranking our necks, painting it. Then we moved in Greg and his stuff. His box-spring had to be gently coerced up the stairs, it left a few marks on the freshly painted ceiling. Then, there's also the linen closet door and trim. There are three drawers under the door (it's tucked under the stairs to the attic, sorry I do not have a picture of it) and they all need to be stripped. They will be repainted and new hardware will be attached. We haven't moved forward because we haven't bought the hardware yet. And it's job security. I know what I'm doing next summer!

summer project #2

You'll remember my brief mention of the hallway project in this post? (Neither did I, as I had to search for it. Lucky for you, I linked it so all you have to do is click. Or click here for a different post about the hallway. Oh, and here are the photos that I said I'd add but never did.)

I'm removing the last of the paint.

Can you tell that I didn't think I was actually in the frame of this photo? (These were both from the landing looking up into the hall, in case you didn't figure that out.)

Here's looking at the second landing, from the first, which also happens to be the bathroom wall where the plumbing is located. Looks like there's been a patch here before...

Same wall as the above photo, all scraped and cleaned and ready for sanding.

Looking back down at the upper landing. Bill's home office is through the door just out of frame on the left.

The hallway project has progressed since these photos, but not since Bill took over at the office in St. Joe. We'll get the door hung on his home office soon (it's just waiting in the basement for some hardware). He has patched and will do a quick sand. Then it can be primed and painted. 

I have moved on to summer project #2. Or outdoor window project. Or Emily's-personal-mini-workcamp.

While Bill was with our Sr. High near Gettysburg, PA building a handicap ramp at a nice elderly woman's home, I was busy painting.

First, I drove to St. Joe. (After driving to Indy to visit Mom and Dad, where I promptly succumbed to food poisoning and ended up spending the entire time in bed, thanks for visiting me Alisha!!)

Jenny, her mom Marty, and I painted a few rooms in the office space there for GLC (the company Bill works for). We painted the lobby, the bathroom and Bill's office.

Here's the before of Bill's office:

 His desk before we moved it

 His furniture on the other side of the room, after we moved it...

 And the corner of the room with nothing in it.

And here's after:

 There's the furniture we moved and a "new" (to his office) picture

And here's his desk (I'm really showing off the pictures we hung because the desk had not been moved back and was a slight disaster). It has already changed a little because Jenny went back and hung a clock. She also put the small frames, that you see in the bookcases, on his desk.

When I picked out the paint color, I thought it was pretty similar to the living room color we chose. I found a speck of paint on my shoe and held it up to our walls at home. It's exactly the same color (different company, different paint name, same color)!

Then I came home and finished scraping paint off from around the side door. I also scraped the paint off the kitchen window.

 Here's the door...

 and here's a close-up of the window sill. Note the multiple layers of paint. And the color (three different shades of green). Yikes!

 Here's the primed trim...

 This is an example of the before (because I'm a dolt like that and forgot to take a before of the door and window).

 And these are the windows upstairs. Oh look! They're a different color. This is why the window trim is being repainted.

 Here's the final color. Um, it's difficult to see because of where I was standing to be out of the sun. But the trim is similar to the house color on the vinyl siding. Which means when I get to the second floor, the window trim colors will be similar to what exists but will stand out from the red house color. The difference from existing to new is the sill color. It is now a dark brown (the existing sill are the same as the trim color). 

Bill and I discussed painting the side door the same dark brown. That will likely happen when the weather cools back down. 

You can click here, to see the dining room windows. Since those photos were taken, we changed the trim color itself. The window casement color (the lightest brown) and the sill are still the same. 

Don't you just love historic preservationists and they're multiple color choices/multiple trim pieces?

Only fourteen more sets of windows, and two more doors, to scrape and paint on a ladder that is too heavy for me to lift by myself (no, really, I tried and almost died).

Anybody want to come help me paint??

Anybody?

Heat Gun Biceps

I'm done scraping the paint off the trim in the hallway upstairs.

I'll have to take a picture. Although it just looks like bare wood and the doors haven't received their treatment yet, but I guess I should record it for progress' sake.

I'll get to that when I can lift my arms again. And hold a camera.

Heat guns are heavy. Even with all the exercises I do, six hours of holding that heat gun above my head has worn me out. Whew.

I'm glad that's done.

Saturday, what a day!

What a busy day.

After morning coffee and a Sandra Bullock Biography, I got to work removing more paint from the upstairs hallway. We had taken a nice break from any work because of Christmas and our trip to Las Vegas. Time to get back to work. There's really not that much left to do.

Just finish removing the paint from around two doors, sand, prime and paint.

Considering there are four doors and the linen closet, that isn't too much left.

I made good head-way.

When Bill got home from the Sr. High youth group practice (they're doing the service tomorrow), we went to Meijer Gardens and took our walk. We walked for about 35 minutes (I forgot my pedometer, so we're guessing it was just over 2 miles. Last time we were there it was just under 2m, but we took the longer route today). I did yoga and my other exercises when we got home.

Whew! My arms hurt just typing it.

Oh wait, my arms hurt because I used them a lot today.

After we both showered and cleaned up, I cooked dinner.

It was a new recipe: Macaroni and Cheese Spaghetti.

I modified it, and it was good! It had cheese (no, really), peas, prosciutto, a bread crumb topping and I added cooked onion. In case you weren't sure, it used spaghetti noodles instead of macaroni. But you really could use whatever pasta you wanted.

We had salads too, you know, so it was a healthy dinner.

And since I used almost every dish in the kitchen, I had to wash them.

Now it's time to relax.

We have a fire going, we're watching a "House Hunters: International", and that was my Saturday.