The Happy Room!

I had some ideas for the breakfast nook, where I make my coffee and do some reading for work in the mornings. The room also serves as additional counter space when we run big kitchen items like the mixer or crock-pot, and it's where the naughty cat takes his meals. Since I'm the only coffee drinking, crock-pot using, cat person here, the nook's my room. But it's so boring. So I decided to paint. I had a color in mind, but I didn't think Mrs. B would ever go for it, given that she vetoed my ideas in other rooms. However, my color choice was approved!

Before and After:

Can't help uploading another one.

The curtain was there when we moved in, and will be replaced eventually. I'd like to put up a shelf to hold our gazillion cookbooks and some coffee items. Either a chrome shelf, or a wooden one painted white or red. Or both white and red. Awhile back, I saw a nice dinette set, red table and red chairs. It was a bit too expensive at the time. I think it'd look great in the room, but what we have in there now does work. And who else has a scalloped octagon-shaped faux marble table in a lovely shade of tan?

On another front, the dining room has been re-electrified. Last week I prepped it for the electrician by removing the old outlets (all 2 of them) and the light switch, making holes for 4 new outlets, and running all the wire to each and to the breaker box. All he had to do was install the receptacles and hook it up to the breaker box. I even adventured into the attic to remove some of the old knob-and-tube wiring running to the light fixture. Snip snip. It only took the guy not even 3 hours to finish off the dining room (if he had had to do all the work, I bet it would have taken him at least 25 hours to do, judging by his progress before. And, it wouldn't have been done anytime soon, since he won't be back until sometime in January).

P.S. The paint color is "Polished Turquoise" by Kilz (found at Wal-Mart); but I had Menard's match it with Dutch Boy paint. I stumbled onto this website, which apparently gives you the color codes for many brands of paint. So if you see someone's house site and like what they've done, but cannot obtain their paint locally, perhaps you could match it using this information.

Electricity Updates

Though I should have been keeping current with the progress, I haven't so now I'm playing catch-up.

We hired a local electrician to upgrade our service from 60 to 100 amps. That portion of the work went fairly well. But the house still needed rewiring to take advantage of the upgrade.

The electrician started on one of the bedrooms, so when the baby arrived that room should have been done. Unfortunately, it wasn't, and it seemed to be taking an inordinately long time for a simple bedroom rewire.

Finally though, that room got done. We decided that the kitchen needed to be the next room done. First, since we couldn't run the microwave without fear of popping fuses or overloading the poor wires. Second, since after I tried changing a light bulb for the kitchen overhead light, the light sparked and stopped working. Here's my "fix" for that problem, to the right. And third, the refrigerator (brand new) weirdly started turning on and off. So did one of our phone's handsets. Both were plugged into the same outlet (only one of two in the kitchen).

The first day of the kitchen rewire went slow but steady, and I helped knock out some holes in the wall for new outlets. I had hoped progress would be quicker though. Since our guy only works on the weekend for us, I decided to prepare all the outlet holes required, find the right spots to drill through the basement ands walls for the wiring, and run some wire. The electrician sure was surprised when he came out next, and the kitchen and breakfast nook are just about finished! Only the lights have to be done, which is fine because I have no desire to walk in the unfloored attic (where the knobs and tubes are not logically laid out at all unlike in the basement). Especially nice that most of the kitchen's done, right before Thanksgiving.

Tool tip: the Bosch 14.4V compact/brute tough line of drills got excellent reviews from a consumer magazine, and good reviews on amazon.com as well. That's what I ended up buying, and it's done a great job at drilling through the studs/floor in the basement (which are apparently made of petrified wood).