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.

Oh Yeah...

Hey there...
Yeah, I know... I have a lot of nerve posting in this thing again after such a long time.
Get over it. It's my blog. I'll do what I want.

So, what's happened since I last updated?
Well, a lot... I guess.

Mostly we've just sort of settled into living in The Serpico House, and it's generally been great. The neighborhood is lovely, quiet and peaceful. Sometimes when I'm sitting in the living room, watching TV with Avy and Xavier, I just kind of marvel at our environment because it's just so pleasant to me.

Having said this, there's still a lot of work to be done. That probably will never end.

Some stuff has been done, though... I should probably have pictures of these things, but I haven't been in a particularly bloggy mindset, so you'll just have to take my word for some stuff.

The kitchen is still kind of a horror show, but there has been an improvement.



Yep. We got a new fridge. It's a stainless steel Whirlpool. See, the original Serpico fridge just quit working one day. Or, rather, one day I reached into the freezer for a carton of ice cream and pulled out a container of chocolate soup. I must admit that we lived with a luke-warm fridge for quite a while... mainly because we couldn't afford a suitable replacement. Sure, I looked on Craigslist, but most of the normal folks who were selling also specified that they couldn't deliver, and, while my car is certainly large enough to carry a lot of stuff, I couldn't fit a fridge in there. So we needed to find a seller who could deliver the unit.

Additionally, we wanted to make a step up in quality... sort of move towards the kitchen we want. Sure, maybe we could've found a nice stainless steel fridge on Craigslist, but, as my father likes to say, "Why would you buy someone else's problems?" In this case, it definitely made sense--buying a used fridge from a private individual would have left us with no recourse if it just decided to die... or leak... or whatever other bad things can happen with major appliances like this.

But the money... the money.

Nice new fridges ain't cheap. In fact, they're kind of pricey. Just look here:
A Whirlpool Fridge

OK, maybe $899 doesn't seem like a lot of money to you, but it definitely seems like a lot of money to us, and we don't have credit cards. Buying something like a fridge is a pretty major investment for us, and we don't have a lot of spare income.

So we waited. I must admit that it sucked. The old fridge was sort of functional, but it didn't really keep things cold, and the freezer was worthless. Not fun.

But then... a small windfall--some side editing work landed me a bit of extra money. Not a lot of extra money, but it seemed like enough to me... $600.

So I hit the "Scratch 'N Dent." Great place. Imagine a double storefront full of new appliances that have some kind of minor imperfection. I found the above pictured Whirlpool fridge for $500. I honestly couldn't find a blemish or scratch on it--the thing was just a little dusty. Compare that to $899 for the "perfect" new fridge, and I feel like I got a good deal for a nice unit. The store delivered the new fridge and removed the old one the next day for another $50.

One thing I hadn't taken into consideration was getting the actual appliance into the house... the delivery folks knew. They called in advance to find out the size of our back door at its narrowest point. They removed the back door and the door to the fridge, replaced everything and set up the new shelves... the whole process took about 15 minutes.

So there you go... an update. About a fridge.

Doing Something About It

You might remember the kitchen in The Serpico House....


It's functional, yes... mostly... but that orange counter-top... what the hell? And the drop ceiling... and the carpet... and the mini-stove. I just don't know what the hell they were thinking. I really don't. At least the cabinets are basically... well... OK, they're not great, but I think new hardware would probably make them a lot better.

But we really want to do something about it.

So we figured we'd just have to replace the counters in order to get something nicer. Or do we?

Check this out: RustOleum Counter-top Paint.

I just saw an ad for this stuff on TV last night, and I went to the RustOleum site to check it out. I dunno... it looks promising. According to the info available, all we'd have to do is paint this stuff onto our counter, and... new counter-top.

This dude got a good result, I think... His accent is kind of amusing, and I don't particularly care for the color/finish he chose, but you can't really argue with the positive impact he got from the product.

I'm considering it...

More Painting. Why Not?

We had/have some not-so-secret shameful elements in The Serpico House.

You've seen our living room. It looks nice.


But then there's the upstairs hallway... Not as nice.




In case you're keeping score, this is a photo from when we first uncovered the floor in the upstairs hallway. You can see the small chunk of rug still left at the top of the steps. On the plus side, the carpet is long gone. On the minus, the walls in the hallway were still the same dingy white... until about a week ago.


Downright shameful that we waited this long to handle that business, but I'm glad we did. Ol' Painty Pants and I had a "painting date," and we got it done. It's the same color as the living room--"Basketry." Except for... umm...

Well, there's the whole area above the steps that is gonna be hard to do.

See, the whole area above the stairs is problematic. As the stairs head downward, the walls just keep going upward... and that's a tough area to reach. The experts recommend using scaffolding or extension ladders or something. Um. Yeah. We ain't got none of those. So... We'll have to figure that out.

Adding Art

What you see right here is the first thing we've actually hung on any of our walls with nails. Considering the number of nails and nail holes we've removed and filled in The Serpico House, you can imagine that we've been somewhat reluctant to make new ones.

Anyway, this is a painting that was done for us by a good friend. We like it.

We need to have it framed... or maybe learn to make a frame for it, but it's nice to see some art on our walls.

Xavier is a little luckier in the art department. He has some great Eric Carle wall decals. They look like these....


He personally oversaw the application of these decals, and he frequently comments on his friends "Brown Beyah" "Burdie" and "Goggie" during diaper changes.


So this naturally has me thinking about wall decals for grown folks. A lot of them are not our type of thing... phrases, etc. Fine with me if you dig that kind of thing, but I can't picture living with some kind of quasi-inspirational quote on the wall. Now, if they made quotes from Sun Tzu's The Art of War on decals, I'd kind of consider this idea, but so many of them are phrases like "Always Kiss Me Goodnight" or "I'm Everything I Am Because of You." Now, while these sentiments certainly apply, I'm pretty sure they can go without being seen on the wall every day. And the hearts and such? I can't take it. Too damn mushy.

Some of the graphic decals are nice, but... eh. I think we should should probably stick with framed art.

Art and Clusters

OK, so most of The Serpico House is looking pretty good these days. We've got the humidity thing in the basement under control. The rooms are, for the most part, painted the way we want them. The kitchen is... the kitchen, and I guess that's not going to change anytime soon, so we're just going to live with it for a while longer. We have the yard sort of figured out with our lawn-cutter guy, and we've actually gotten the gutters cleaned--by the way, it hasn't rained since we had the gutters cleaned about two weeks ago. Figures, right?

Eventually, we plan to have the big tree in our yard trimmed back so that it's not hanging over the house, and we do eventually want to handle the ivy on our back wall, but those things will also have to wait a while.

All of these things are great, but we haven't really dealt with art or hanging stuff on the walls. It's not like we don't have any art to hang, either. For example, one of our dear friends made us a lovely painting, and we really like it... but we haven't hung it yet. We also have a bunch of neat prints, posters and carved masks, too. Now, in my younger days, I probably would have just bashed a bunch of nails into the wall, popped the masks and paintings onto the nails and called it a day. As for my myriad posters, prints and other items... well, let's just say that I used to be a big fan of scotch tape and staples. I know, I know... tacky, right?

So, acting as an adult here, I'm thinking about frames and arranging artwork around the house. Dig on this photo for a minute or two.....


Granted, we don't have a white couch (and I'm pretty sure we'll never get one!), and we don't have any funky wallpaper, but that cluster of framed artwork on the wall speaks to me. In fact, Avy and I visited some friends recently, and I really wish I had a picture of one of their walls to show off here--they have a really wonderful amalgamation of neat, framed stuff on their walls, from music-related posters to personal photos and works from local artists. It's visually arresting and compelling. The lady of the house says she snagged most of the frames at thrift stores. I think the key here is that all of the art is framed. Most anything looks more important when it is framed. For example, this poster is just kind of a band poster for a show that has already passed...


But I bet if I had it in a nice black frame, it'd be a cool thing to have on the wall. A conversation piece, even.

I want to get on this as a project and hang up our art. Soon.