When we installed our contemporary chandelier in the dining room …

we had to decide what to do with the original chandelier…

I didn’t particularly hate the shape of this light. What did offend me was the tacky gold/brass skeleton overlaid in plastic. And, although you can’t quite see it in the picture, there were millions of these miniature plastic flowers tied on with gold wire to keep the plastic covers on the chandelier arms. Nice.

We were originally planning on giving the chandelier away. But after my first successful attempt at spray painting some parts for our dining room light extension, I thought it might be worthwhile trying to fix this Dynasty throwback.

So I took that sucker apart and spray painted everything chrome. And I mean everything. Even the little connection wires between each of the squillions of crystals. After a few days letting the paint cure, we began putting the light back together (minus the plastic coverings and flowers). A few cute spherical bulbs gave the light a bit more of a contemporary feel, and voila! we had a madeover light (picture updated!).

It’s new location is going to be in our bedroom-turned-loft library. How luxe will it be to relax in a comfortable chair with a cuppa ho-cho, surrounded by a plethora of books, reading under the sophisticated, sparkly chandelier?

What do think? Do you think the chrome makes or breaks this chandelier?

The house renovations have slowed down a bit lately.  Maybe all that new homeowner vim and vigor has finally run out. Or the money has run out. Or perhaps is just takes two to do the renovation tango.  Renovating can be fun, but it also can be a tough job for two people to do together, let alone on their own-some. My month long excursion to the UK didn’t help our progress. Plus, as soon as I got back to America, Rick had to go on a week-long work trip to Notre Dame university (I tried not take it personally). Yesterday, a good friend noted that I hadn’t posted on the blog for some time, to which I replied that we hadn’t recently finished many projects to blog about.  But it got me thinking about all we have done around the house.  Today marks six months being in our new house.  Six months! Where did the time go? Seeing as I tend to be a ‘glass half empty’ kind of girl, now seems like a good time to think about all the projects we have completed so far:

All carpet has been pulled up

Back yard fence was built

Front and back doors were replaced

Landscape lighting has been installed

Downstairs bathroom was gutted and new tile installed. Bathroom vanity made over with a granite top and vessel sink.

New exterior lights installed

Dining room window replaced

 French doors hung between kitchen and office

Foyer chandelier replaced

Two foyer walls removed and headers installed

Dining room floor painted

Master bedroom ceiling fan installed

Dining room chandelier replaced

Siding removed and rehung

Thermostats switched out

100,000,000 green bugs,  3,000 big-ass spiders, 2 bats, a mole, a lizard, a frog… and a partridge in a pear tree.

Pheww! We’ve been busy! But all this optimism is making me feel all Paula Abdul – I’m much more Simon Cowell-esque (must be a British thing).  If I wear my pessimist hat for a minute, I’d hate to compile a list of all the projects that we have left to do around the house. Wow, that list would be longer than a prize bull’s ba-donk-a-donk. We’ll get there in the end.  That’s what the bull said.

First task today was to finish the trench for the landscape lighting cable.  I was relaxing, I mean, supervising Rick from the comforts of our porch on our new rocking chair (another great bargain found on sale at Big Lots), when I spied two visitors just across from our front lawn.

In the first picture, you can just about see two deer on our neighbor’s drive.  Luckily, I had my camera to hand and snapped a couple of photos. Seeing that I needed the telescopic lens, I ran inside, changed the zoom and took the second close-up.  I guess this is one of the joys of country living – having such fab wildlife in your front yard!

Anyhoodles, after that little bit of excitement, Rick and I got on with finishing the landscape lighting. Following the steps we outlined here, we now have fully functional and maintainably tuft-free lights.  Now all we have to do is figure out how to get Number Five out of our yard!

With the extra long Memorial Day weekend upon us, we have a number of projects planned to complete:

1. Convert dingy dog room into delightful dining room

2. Paint and install French doors between kitchen and office

3. Finish trench for outside landscape lights (and then mow grass!)

4. Grout the downstairs bathroom tile

5. Develop and upload secret photography project to blog

Not sure exactly how many of these projects will get done, but that’s the plan anyway.  Check back to see how we’re progressing and in the meantime, have a great Memorial Day weekend!

Our exterior landscape lights have been out of commission for the past few weeks. We intentionally disconnected the lights in order to come up with a solution for dealing with our tufty grass.

The wires connecting the three pairs of lights run above ground, so Rick has not been able to get too close using the ride-on lawn mower.  The result being that we have about a 30 foot strip of grass where the lights are placed, plus another 30 foot of wire that runs to the house, where the grass remains much longer than the rest of the lawn.  Whilst we can weed-wack the majority of the grass around the wires, it’s not the best idea to get too close to the lights themselves.  That’s left us with these huge tufts of grass obscuring the lights.  We could, of course, manually pull up the grass around the lights every week, but that sounds like way too much work! )  Much easier to come up with a more permanent solution to our tuft problem.  

So, that’s why we decided we needed to disconnect the lights and bury the cable.  Once the wires are out of the way, Rick will be able to mow the majority of the grass with the lawn mower.  Much easier. No more 60 foot strip of overgrown grass. Nice.

In order to protect the cable in its new earthly resting place, we bought about 60 feet of 3/4″ pvc pipe to thread the cable through before burying.  The pipe came in 6 x 10 ft. sections, which worked out really well as the lights are spaced approximately 10 feet apart. So the break in the pvc pipe comes at just the right spot where the next set of lights start. 

We used pvc connectors at the end of the pipes, plus an elbow connector to steer the cable towards the electrical supply on the house. We decided against using any pvc glue to join the pipe/connectors.  This gives us some flexibility to change the pipe configuration at a later date, should we decide to add to our little landscape light family.

Next up? Digging. We tried using a shovel to dig a small 2-3″ trench for the pipe to lay in. Tried, being the operative word here. Our clay soil is one hard …. (insert appropriate expletive here), and even after a few days of rain when you think the soil would soften up some, we were still unable to make much progress. Seeing as renting an appropriate tool costs anywhere between $60-$80 bucks for the day, it was definitely the more cost effective solution to spend 50 bucks on an edger/trencher attachment for the weed-wacker. So with power tools in hand, Rick was able to make the 60ft long, 3 inch deep trench in a matter of seconds.  Ok, not seconds.  But, you get the idea. 

With the cable buried and the majority of the lawn “mowable” again, we then needed to find a solution for the tufts of grass around the lights that are not “weed-wackable” (wow, I’m creating a slew of new adjectives here). Our original idea was to dig (ugh!) around the lights and bury some landscape edging. Doing this on four sides would create a little box for the lights to sit in and be protected from the ravages of Rick’s weed-wacker. We could then stop (or at least temporarily inhibit) the weeds and grass coming through by placing down weed cloth with landscaping rocks on top.

When we got to the DIY store, list in hand, we actually came across a better solution. These rubber mulch rings, typically used for around trees, were perfect for slipping around the lights and inhibiting the weed growth.  Yey, no more digging! Plus, they are totally safe for being mown over should Rick get a little lawn-mower crazy.

So, there you have it – our solution for dealing with tufty grass around landscape lights. Minus the 50 bucks for equipment, this project was very cost effective (around $30) and will save Rick a lot of hassle over the coming summer months. Cheap and effective.  What more can a girl ask for? Well, now that you ask… Shoes. Clothes. Make-up…

A couple of weeks ago, we installed four exterior lights in our front yard in an effort to illuminate the outside of our house.  However, the four lights weren’t sufficient to give complete coverage across the whole fascia, leading my friend Nick to comment that it looked like the Amityville (or Amy-tiville) horror house. We ordered two more 50watt lights (the power pack can be loaded up to a max 300watts) a couple of weeks ago and they arrived in the mail yesterday.

I think the illumination is much more even now (compared to the 4-light set up). Still looks like house on the haunted hill though…

Here’s how the outside lights illuminate the house.  There are a couple of dark patches, so we might need to get two more lights to ensure even illumination. Especially if we want to avoid it looking like (to paraphrase my friend Nick) the Amy-tiville horror house.

he’s buried in our front yard and is guarding the house!

We installed the new outside lighting today. Very easy to do – plug it in, run the wire, clip the lights onto wire and hey presto! lights are working.  Now we have to wait and see what the lights look like at night – we might have to reposition them slightly depending on how they hit the house.