Not Scared of Lights

OK, I have mentioned that the wiring in The Serpico House is old. The house was built in 1950, so this is no shock (no pun intended.)

This became a bigger concern when our dining room dimmer switch decided to break. Now, that switch was old, so it was bound to break eventually. So we were using floor lamps in the dining room for a while. Why? I'll be honest... I was scared to mess with it. I was kind of afraid I'd get shocked. But something happened. I became brave. That was probably because I was kind of tired of not being able to see in there without turning on a lamp. So I turned off the power to the house and took a shot.

Here's what it looked like:


I don't know if you can see this, but what we had was basically three wires coming out of the wall... two were wired to one wire on the switch, and one was wired to the other wire on the switch. New components have three or four wires--a hot wire (red), a neutral wire (black) and a ground wire (green). Sometimes you'll see a fourth wire. I don't know what to do with that one. Anyway, I called a friend who knows about wiring, and he told me that houses from that era don't have grounding. So this left the other two wires, which were both black. My friend told me that the spliced wires had to be the "hot" wires because the splice was carrying power on to the next switch or outlet. So that spliced set of wires should be wired to the red wire. This means the other black wire had to go to the black wire. And the ground wire? It goes nowhere, so I wrapped it up.

Here's the old switch:


It was old, OK?

I was scared to try the newly wired switch... but we tried it. And it worked. I was so proud. Here's how it looked when I got it all back in there.

So that solved our lighting concern in the dining room. Much better.

But do you remember that we had crap lighting in the kitchen, especially near the stove? Well, we do plan to replace the overhead light with something more significant. But, until we do... I have created this temporary solution:


Is it super-cool and awesome kitchen lighting? No. But it's functional, and we can see while we cook. I'll put it in the "win" category for now.

Heating Things Up and Avoiding Lights... and a Red Door

I didn't think I'd have another kitchen update so soon, but here we go.

You may remember our old stove situation. It was not good. Don't ask me why, but Mrs. Serpico had an apartment-sized stove in the kitchen. These things are great if you live in Manhattan or Tokyo... or some city where space is really at a premium.

These stoves look like this:


That's almost exactly the stove we'd been using. Here's how our kitchen used to look:


You can sort of see that little white stove next to the enormous microwave. These apartment-sized stoves are 20" wide. Try putting more than one pot or pan on there... it's not easy or fun. On the plus side, the oven part is so small (how small is it?) that it heats up quickly and makes your baking times shorter.

But let's talk about upgrades and fancy-pants stoves now.

We knew we wanted an electric stove. Yes, I know... true gourmet chefs scoff at electric stoves because they like to cook with a flame, etc, etc. But we don't have a gas line in our kitchen, and we're comfortable with an electric stove/oven. So there.

Here's the new stove... fresh from the good ol' scratch n' dent. That place is awesome.


It's a Maytag Gemini double oven. I found a link for it at the Maytag site, but it wouldn't load up properly for me, so, as dumb as it sounds, go ahead and Google it if you want.

Basically, this stove can do crazy amazing things. I can't even begin to explain all the features. One of the coolest aspects is the double oven. One oven is just a regular oven (the top one), but the bottom one can be used as a convection oven or a regular oven. The convection oven cooks twice as fast as a regular oven using fans and magical powers to make that happen. Yes, that's science.

Bottom line: the new stove is great. We love it. We sometimes just walk into the kitchen and giggle.

So, another concern in the kitchen has been the windows. If you look at the "before" picture of our kitchen you can see that the two big windows in the back corner of the kitchen had Mrs. Serpico's lovely flower curtains as treatments. Two problems here:
1. We are not flower curtain people.
2. Those curtains did nothing to give us privacy or block light.

Now, most people don't want to block light from coming into their kitchen, but most people also don't have neighbors who light up their driveways as if they were trying to prevent a prison break. Our neighbors are nice folks who take care of their home and are generally good people, but they have installed what may be the brightest lights known to humankind in their driveway. And their driveway is right next to our kitchen. This means that our kitchen is blindingly bright as soon as darkness falls.... or attempts to fall. Honestly, I don't think the sun could light their driveway as brightly as these lights.

This wouldn't be so bad, but they also have a flag hanging on the side of their house. This flag flaps majestically in the wind. Yes, Old Glory looks lovely, and I certainly don't begrudge their patriotism. However, the flag is very close to one of the lights, and when the flag does its majestic flapping thing, it blocks the light. And then it unblocks it. And then blocks it. All night. The effect is something like a very slow, indifferent strobe light. And, yes, it's annoying.

So we needed to mitigate this. The answer: new shades.

Since it's the kitchen, we decided to keep it simple and clean. Here's what we did:


No more flowered curtains. It's nice. Also, it's more private. And less strobey.

And did you think Ol' Painty Pants was gone for good? You'd be wrong. She showed up just long enough to see a beige door and want to paint it red.



Observant viewers will notice that the door looks to be very similar in shade to the dining room. It is not similar. It is actually exactly the same shade. Ol' Painty Pants is not one to waste paint.

OK, now... upcoming projects:
Remove kitchen drop ceiling.
Install track lighting in kitchen.
New dishwasher.
New microwave.
New wooden kitchen countertops and sink.
Paint kitchen.
New cabinet hardware.
New floor in kitchen (remove carpet, add tile).
New lighting in dining room.
New light/ceiling fan in Small Bear's room.
Light kit for ceiling fan in our bedroom.

It's gonna happen. Eventually. For now, we love our stove and shades.