Our New Old House » ceiling fan

A room in which to live: the Living Room

Kelli — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:07:23 +0000

I wanted to take a picture of this before it got painted over. The living room and dining room both had this trim around the top of the wall.

I had to do a lot of plaster work in this room. I’m particularly proud of reconstructing this corner that had crumbled away as the house settled.

Here’s a before picture:

One side of the wall over the fireplace needed some major repair:

I started attacking the gunk on the floor with a new vengeance, doing garbage bag sized sections rather than grocery bag sized ones.

Mom came over with some of my friends to help me put primer on the walls.

We bought a new rug, cleaned everything up, and arranged the furniture and here’s the result! It’s not finished, but I can see the finish line from here!

Phew! We can actually live in the living room now! Paint colors for the wall are being planned, also I’m going to restore the bookcases with leaded glass windows.

[tags] built-ins, photos, plaster, furniture, paint, future plans, ceiling fan, flooring, living room, fireplace, cabinets[/tags]

More like a home

ournewoldhouse1 — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 17:48:06 +0000

Well, Brandon’s out of town for two weeks and I feel like I’m coming down with something, so I’m afraid the updates may be few and far between for a little while. But here’s what I’ve got from the past week or so:

The bathroom lights are finished and they look and work great! The one in the ceiling has a ventilation fan.

My Grandma gave me a couple pieces of furniture to get us started. The bed is nice and comfy and the vanity is an antique that belonged to my great grandmother who came from Mexico.

Once our bedroom was nice and comfortable, I caught Brandon taking a snooze on the bed.

This is always going to be a problem: Brandon’s too long for the bed.

But he’s just right for me.

We stayed in our new old house on Saturday night. I took Brandon to the airport on Sunday morning, and I slept at the house by myself last night. It’s nice and comfortable with the windows cracked open to let the breeze in. The cats love it too. Oh yeah! I haven’t posted about the cats moving in! That’s coming next. Stay tuned!

Progress… in progress

Kelli — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 03:16:15 +0000

The electricians are probably going to wrap up today. We stopped by the house to drop of a light fixture for the kitchen and we took a look around. Here are pictures!

The house is in various stages of disarray, but no worries!

This is the light fixture that was removed from the basement hallway. Pretty gross huh?

The ceiling fan we picked out for the living room:

The light in the dining room that compliments the ceiling fan in the living room:

New light fixtures in the bathroom. We’re going for a chrome and white look for all the bathroom fixtures. These lights look a little out of place amongst the 70s wallpaper and dingy yellow paint. Just wait until everything is crisp and white! (Additionally, we have had them install a ceiling fan + light, but since that wasn’t fully installed yet I didn’t take a picture.)

The wood burning stove insert is all done, the chimney is re-lined, and the part above the roof has been rebuilt completely. It all looks GREAT and I’ve never been so excited for cold weather to arrive so I can try this out!

Just a quick plug for a really great business here: The company we hired for this, Alpine Chimney Sweep, was simply awesome! If you have any chimney or fireplace or wood burning stove issues at your house and you’re anywhere near Des Moines, I really recommend looking them up. They’re friendly, efficient, clean, and even bumped up our installation day because they had an unexpected opening in their schedule.

Here’s the stove unit ready to install:

While they had the chimney and firebox all cleared out, I took the opportunity to take a few pictures of an area most homeowners never really get a good look at: the inside of the chimney and ash dump.

Here’s the firebox all cleaned out:

The damper had rusted shut and debris from the crumbling chimney had fallen on top of it. It had to be removed anyway, so here’s what’s left of the broken pieces, leaving room for the new liner and stove pipe:

The view up the chimney:

I put my camera in great peril to get this shot looking down into the ash dump:

The front of our new wood burning stove:

A wider view:

I’m really glad they put the original flue damper handle back in its place. It’s not needed anymore, but it’s better than having a big hole in the brick where it should go. I can’t wait to clean up the area around the hearth and maybe paint the brick a different color. I have big plans for this fireplace area of the house! Big plans, I say!

Sadly, by the time we got around to looking at the chimney outside we’d lost too much light for me to take a picture. You’ll get your picture though, never fear!

I am absolutely thrilled at how much progress was made this week. I never imagined everything would go so smoothly and so fast. Here’s hoping for continued good fortune in the rest of our projects to come.

Oh! And another quick shout out to a damned decent guy, Matt, who works with Brandon, at least for the time being. Matt is headed back to Omaha to rejoin his lovely wife there and since he’s moving, he graciously offered us his futon, no charge! That’s great because we can use all the free furniture we can get! Thanks again, Matt!

[tags]bathroom, ceiling fan, chimney, contractors, dining room, electricity, fireplace, light fixtures, living room, photos, wood burning stove[/tags]

Lights, camera, action!

Kelli — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 02:53:17 +0000

On Saturday we went to Home Depot and Menards to buy light fixures for the whole house. That was fun, but it’s not getting any easier to drop that much money in a single trip to the hardware store. Mom and Brandon talked me into buying a ceiling fan/light for the living room. I’d always hated these because all the ones I’d seen in people’s houses were either really old and outdated, or were just cheap and ugly to begin with, with the exception of my in-laws’ house. The only ceiling fan I’ve ever liked was in Brandon’s old room in his parents’ house. So anyway, we got one that has a nice hammered bronze look with dark teak blades. We got a flush mount fixture for the dining room that also has a hammered bronze finish. My plan is to make those two rooms very similar, but decorate them differently enough that they each have their own distinct space. More details on that when it comes time to choose paint colors.

Here’s the ceiling fan we picked out:

And the light for the dining room that compliments the ceiling fan (the bowl on this one isn’t as yellow as it came out in my picture):

See?

I LOVE the overhead light/fan fixture we bought for the bathroom. It’s a little more contemporary, but very simple and I like to think timeless. (Again, not as yellow in real life.)

For the lights on either side of the mirror, we went with a bolder, and more expensive choice, but I think it will work really well.

So here’s our pile of light fixtures in our house. I told Brandon it feels like Christmas!

[tags]bathroom, ceiling fan, dining room, electricity, light fixtures, living room, photos[/tags]