The $5 Chandelier Experiment

Well, before I get too far I'd like to take you all off yer tenterhooks and say that the experiment was a success, thanks in no small part to the help of my father-in-law (and my mother, who didn't say, "you're going to do what to it?" and instead helped me prepare it for a makeover.) Back to the beginning. While ceiling fans are great (we know, we've been living without them), we wanted something a little closer to the ground (have I mentioned the ceilings in the old part of the house are 10 feet?) in the dining room. I'm not a huge fan of overhead lights that hug the ceiling, so a chandelier seemed an obvious option. New chandeliers, however, are expensive. I didn't like a lot of what I saw in home improvement stores. I liked some things I saw elsewhere: Pottery Barn:

Restoration Hardware:

But! spending $300-500 on a light fixture would be painful, I think, even if we could. So we (admittedly) went pretty far in the opposite direction and decided to try and make a $5 chandelier we found at a Habitat ReStore work. The last vestiges of the old fan (sorry for not taking a more complete 'before' picture):

I'm having trouble finding the picture I took of the chandelier, pre-makeover, but it looked pretty much like this--only older, and having been ripped unjudiciously out of the ceiling of its former home:

My father-in law attached a new wire and chain to the top (the old one was about 2 feet long, and since the old fan was in the middle of the room and the table wouldn't be--lest you need to crawl over it to get to the kitchen--we needed some length to swag). We then hung it in the carport to be spray-painted (which, by the way, was an interesting look; it's surreal having a fairly formal-looking chandelier hanging over the hood of your car.) I then spray-painted the whole thing, chain and all, with Valspar "Metal" spray-paint in "Graphite," which is a tad browner than it appears in this picture:

The above was taken after the "candle" sheaths were replaced. They were removeable, so we took them off pre-spray-paint and wrapped painters' tape over the bulb sockets inside. A close-up:

By the way, it wasn't dark when I took this. It was overcast. This was one project that was going on during the "great moving-weekend storm" that left puddles of mud inside and out, made our yard look like a convention of chia pets come to roost, and effectively splattered all of the tile-and-saw-dust from the goings-on with the floor all over the side of the house. But you know, whatever. We got a good chance to tell if there were any roof leaks. So... given the chandelier, the wiring kit, and 2 cans of spray paint (I probably could have gotten away with one, but I wanted to be sure it was as even as possible), we're now up to about $27 for the whole project. Finally, my father-in-law attached the whole thing to the ceiling where the fan had been, and we flipped the breaker. Success! In situ, with ten tiny shades attached (these we found at Lowe's):

Not too shabby, for a total of about $60 (including the shades, which weren't strictly necessary, and the extra hardware for the swag hook, which needed to be longer than the one in the kit due to how the ceiling was constructed). We're really pleased with it, and it makes the room look a whole lot different. So.. lessons learned, I guess--it's great to have a family member who's handy with the electrical stuff (had we not--I'm thinking of that Pepsi Max commercial. "Ready?.... Nooo."), and don't try to spray-paint the underside of something while your face is four inches away from it and upside-down. Especially if you wear contacts. My eyeballs haven't fallen out yet, but it was iffy there for awhile. More pictures to come, once the room is clear of boxes and we get the table/chairs in place. Thanks to all who helped!

Goodbye, Tile Floors (The Resolution)

The Tile is Gone. The guys came a day early and started ripping it out, and it turned out to be pretty much as bad as we thought (or worse); they basically had to chip out the tile with something that looked like a crowbar, then come back the next day with things that looked like giant car-window ice scrapers to scrape off tile cement that was underneath. They kept having to sharpen the things on a saw to make them useful. Anyway, scraping out the cement and tile meant that the kitchen, family room and screened porch were completely coated with a substantial layer of orangish tile dust for about 24 hours there--and tile dust, I might add, neither smells good nor does it make for particularly nice breathing. I'd be lying if I said we had any regrets about not doing this ourselves; I'm pretty sure we would have given up when the scraper got dull. Anyway, I took some pictures mid-scrapeage. But first, a visual reminder of what used to be:

Inside, with the tile gone but a lot of the cement intact:

The pile of tile accruing in the driveway:

After all that was done, the flooring went in pretty quickly. We were around, trying to complete some other projects, and it seemed like every time I went back there was another third of the floor done. So, (drum roll, please:) THE FINISHED FLOOR.

We absolutely love it. It's beautiful--it makes such a difference in those rooms; they're so warm and inviting now, even without anything in them. SO much better than "public restroom" tile. The Captain, however, is reserving judgment. But then, he's generally resistant to change:

It seems really, really solid and we really love the texture of it. We found that none of the samples we'd seen (even the 3' x 6' one in Home Depot) really did it justice--the variegation is really cool and the color is much warmer on-site than it seemed under the home-improvement-store halogens. Three cheers for new flooring! Where 'toughness' is concerned--we moved in this weekend, and it did withstand a washing machine falling off a dolly with no scratch at all. We tramped in and out many many times from the gravel driveway carrying boxes and pushing handtrucks, and I haven't seen any signs of wear--though right now, most of it's covered with boxes, so I suppose we won't really know until we can see it again. (MWAH, HA HA HA HA! Ha. Ha. Sob.) So, to summarize, we used Home Legend 3.5" Click-lock engineered hardwood in gunstock oak (as far as I know, only available at Home Depot), all-in-one pad/moisture barrier underlayment, and white composite quarter-round. We hired out the tile removal and the floor laying, but we took responsibility for buying/hauling all the flooring and materials and the Mr. did the quarter-round trim himself. He would like me to mention that hammering composite quarter-round (which, apparently, is harder than the regular stuff) into the space between the bottom of the kitchen cabinets and floor is somewhat less than fun ("If this crap was on Facebook, I'd reject its friendship," I believe he said) and the process may have resulted in our second home-improvement related injury. We're hoping he regains the feeling in that thumb. I think that's it! It was our big pre-moving-in project, and having it done is amazing. More pictures to come when the boxes are gone and the furniture is in.

Wallpaper, or: "Sometimes it's there for a reason."

The previous owners of our new house had pretty great taste. The wall colors are nice, neutral and understated (not to mention well-painted). The trim is a nice creamy white, even the window treatments I'd have probably picked out. In the kitchen, though, below a piece of trim about four feet up the wall, was a faux-tile wallpaper (...that I rather famously thought was real tile--yes, until I actually touched it. Score one for the wallpaper). I'm not a huge fan of wallpaper, so first item on the agenda: down she comes. We highly recommend 'WP CHOMP!' brand wallpaper stripper, which not only works well, but is fun to say when particularly large parts of paper fall off with little effort. ("Narghnarghnargh-wp!-CHOMP.") It also smells like Bacardi O, but I don't recommend drinking it. So.. the problems arose the more paper we got down. It turned out that the backsplash, the wall next to the refrigerator, and the wall behind the stove used to be tiled. How could we tell? There was still a good bit of grooved adhesive on the wall. I have no idea how old it is, but it's pretty petrified and chemicals haven't seemed to make any difference. You'd be able to see the texture under the paint we'd picked out. We thought briefly about sanding it--as messy as that might be--but in the end, decided that the slim chance that the stuff contained asbestos was worth pursuing other options. 'Other options' turned out to be 1) removing the wallboard and replacing it, or 2) recovering the areas. Since we'd like to retile at some point, but can't afford it immediately, we opted to 'recover.' Beadboard, likewise, is a little expensive for our needs--so we decided to go with a paintable wallpaper. Yes, wallpaper comes down, and more goes up. That might seem inefficient, but I'm telling myself that this stuff is 1) made to be painted over, and 2) mostly vinyl, which sounds good from a kitchen-cleaning perspective. It's available in a lot of goofy textured patterns, but we took a chance and went with one that's supposed to look like pressed tin. I was surprised by how well it went up, actually; I've never hung wallpaper before and I think we managed to do it pretty well. (The true test will be when we go back this evening to see how it's dried.) Here are some pictures of a wall, still wet; once it's painted, the contrast between the raised vinyl parts and the backing won't be visible, but for now it looks kind of interesting. A closeup: From the other side of the room: Next steps are painting, and a good washing-down of the floor and baseboards (wallpaper goo gets EVERYWHERE). Oh, and don't underestimate the the dangers of wallpaper: I managed to sustain my first home-improvement related injury from the stupid trim guard. Post-painting pictures to come.