Lights, camera, action!

Lights

I don't know what took me so long to pick out pendants to go over the dining table but it has been months in the works.  We have been using a table lamp in the meantime, which can be pretty inconvenient.  My original plan was to get drum shaded pendants about 15 inches or less.  I wanted the stem to be in oil-rubbed bronze finish, not silver.  Apparently that can be difficult to find at a reasonable price.  Everything I found was about $150 and I needed two.  That seemed too high.  So I kept looking.  Eventually I got tired of the drum lights without actually having them.  I ended up with a variation which was square shaped shades.

These lights had the main things I was looking for: oil-rubbed bronze base, more than one light bulb each, 13 inches wide, and priced at $59.99 each (marked down from $180).  If I ever decide I don't like the shades or want more color, I think I can replace them with other shades.  However, there is a downside to having two squared pendants - the smallest rotation of the shade makes them look crooked.  We'll see if I will be constantly adjusting the shade.

Camera

Just a couple of quick snapshots of the finished Ranger Room.  I have the other drawers for the dresser at home, just need to empty them out :-). 












Sorry for the blurry picture, didn't realize it until I got back home.













Action

I am making traction on our water quality issue.  I had the Culligan guy come out to look at our well and tell me what they could do for the sulfur odor.  He said they have a system that injects a very small amount of chlorine into the water to kill the bacteria that makes the smell.  Then the chlorine is removed by the water softener which we already have.  He'll be sending me a quote but it will likely be around $1000.  If it works, it is worth it.

Not sure what my next room will be.  I still have the master bedroom which needs a wall removed and all that goes along with that.  I will need help with some things to get started so it may be delayed.  I could work on the kids' bunk room which is functional right now but will need to be reconfigured when the new bathrooms are done.  This will involve mostly moving doors and building walls.  Another option is the gameroom which will involve making a large passage between two rooms, pulling up carpet, and installing new flooring.  Now that the weather is warming up, I might do the outdoor room so we can start to enjoy it.  Stay tuned...

Rock on

Just a quick update on our address rock.  My husband drug over a big rock from the property and we stood it on end with the bottom buried in the ground.  My son power washed it and I sprayed a little bleach to get it as light as possible.  Then I took some address numbers we found at the house and hung them on some nail in the rock.  If everyone likes the placement of the numbers I will glue them to the rock with a cement adhesive or liquid nails.  Here it is for right now:

I am going to try to find a good solar spotlight that can shine on the rock in the dark.  I am hoping this stops the random knocks on our door looking for another house on our road.

P.S.  Sorry for the delay in posting this week, we didn't get much done.  Our dog of 16 years died this past weekend so we found a soft place in the dirt for her.  As you can see from the picture, that can be hard to find but she is in a nice spot surrounded by trees with a wonderful headstone my 11 year old chiseled for her.  Another benefit of having some land in the country is that you have a final resting place for pets, especially large ones.  We will miss Picabo very much but can now visit her grave whenever we like.

The Ranger Room

Our second smallest bedroom, we call the Ranger room due to a transparency that was on the wall when we bought the house.  It is a famous quote by Texas Ranger, Captain McDonald, who replied," One riot, one ranger," when asked why there was only one Texas Ranger to stop an illegal prize fight in 1896.  We decided we liked the Texas history component and have left the room the original brown color so we could leave the transparency on the wall.  I did paint the brown ceiling white and also plan to paint the trim white sometime soon.

So we pulled up the carpet, removed the carpet tacks and baseboards, patched the holes and scraped the floor when we spent the week at the house for Christmas.  For this room I have glued down the engineered hardwood, same as the previous bedroom.  I guess I am getting much better at this over time because I was able to finish about 2/3 of the room in one 5 hour session:

(Sorry for the sideways photo but the blog won't let me rotate it!?!)

So I thought it would take no time at all to get the rest of the flooring done.  However, there was a lot of cutting in the closet and along the last wall that ended up taking two more days of work.  Eventually I was able to get the floor laid and the baseboards installed.  I hung the curtains and am in the process of moving in the furniture.

Once we get a new mattress, this room will be ready to occupy!  I have also added some furniture and curtains to the den so it looks even more like a lived in space:

I am not sure what will be our next priority.  Ideally we would start on a bathroom but I need to get my plumber to commit to a schedule since pipes will need to be moved.  Until then I guess I will work on smaller projects.  I have been searching for the right pendant lights to go over the dining table.  I found some I will order but I also need to run the electricity to a second light box.  That means another trip into the attic - ugh!  I have also been trying to figure out how to display our address.  It used to be on the house over the garage but nobody could see it from the road.  So this weekend my husband used his new lawn mower with a pull cart to haul some large rocks around.  The largest one has a pretty flat face so we stood it on end and buried it a little at the foot of the driveway.  I am going to try to clean it very well and glue some numbers to it.  Finally, I have a lead on the stinky water problem.  Apparently Culligan has a system that should be able to get rid of the smell.  That would be a relief!

That's all until next time.