Author Archives: Mike

The Dining Room Chandelier

The previous owners of our home had a thing for lighting. Almost every room is some sort of track or recessed lighting. Most of the lights looked pretty good, except for the fixture in the kitchen. Welcome to 1984:

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View from above, in case you didn’t get a feel for the vintage:IMG_1902

So, Mom (Sara’s Mom) has been changing out old light fixtures in the Nelson household, and has been offering up the old lights to Mike and I. Being the avid DIYer’s that we are attempting to become, we have taken them in, and begun the process of making them workable for our new home. I knew that I wanted to go with oil rubbed bronze on the hardware in this home, and have determined that a can of spray paint is more affordable than changing everything out for new. So the first big project to test our spray painting prowess, the great big chandelier that used to hang in my parents dining room, which will now call our kitchen home.

These are the only “before” photos we were able to get before the *new* chandelier was taken apart and attacked with tape:

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Let the taping begin.

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So many little pieces to paint!

I’m not sure how much tape we ended up going through, but it was totally necessary since I really didn’t want to have to scrape up the chandelier trying to remove the over-spray.

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Here is the paint and primer we used: Both are RustOleum

 

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I didn’t prime the chandelier with a think coat of the Zinsser, as I wasn’t too worried about a little of the gold peaking through the Oil-Rubbed Bronze topcoat. I only used enough primer to make sure that the color would stick.

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TA-DA! Here is the dome all dry!

Confession time: I don’t have any photos of me spraying the candelabra parts, because I was a little hasty with this project. It was a rainy week in Minneapolis and the humidity was too high to spray out in the garage, so I decided that the utility basement was ventilated enough. This was not smart. I totally inhaled waaaay too much spray paint, and had to go lie down to get my breathing to normalize (I might have over-reacted just a tad). But anyways, I was finally able to move outside later that week and was able to get the dome sprayed without doing further harm to my lungs.

Now comes the fun part, pulling the old beast down and stringing up the new!

Mike starts to dismantle the old fixture:

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So many wires!

I wish we had gotten more photos of this process. It was so tedious, and at one point I’m pretty sure we almost had a small kitchen fire. However, the final product was totally worth it! Final photos below:

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What an improvement!

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When looking at this photo you should hear angels singing… I do.

Now we’ll be able to put this fancy-shmancy fixture on a dimmer, and enjoy a little mood lighting! 

Thanks for visiting! – Sara

Old and Busted, New Hotness

Have you ever noticed how much light switches and vents can date a home? You would if you lived in our house. Although we didn’t notice the rusty grates and yellowed outlets when we did our two walk-through’s, or inspection, they became disgustingly obvious once we moved in. Remarkable to see what some steel wool and paint can do to vent covers.  Also very much worth the price for new hardware for outlets, light switches and other random household wall coverings. Although you can buy new vent grates (instead of taking the painstaking slow process of painting the old like we did) I was a little concerned that new vents wouldn’t fit in the odd holes that are around the house. So, until we have a little more time and cash, we’ll just use what we got and act like its a fun learning process. 🙂

This is the upper full bath grate (gross) on the day we moved in.

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Vent before.

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Bathroom vent after some major scrubbing, a layer of primer and two coats of white glossy paint.

I mean, seriously, the toilet looks directly at that thing. There is no way the previous owners could not have noticed! Unless they were going for the “rust”ic-dirty look (is that even a thing?). Man, I crack myself up.

This is the primer I used: RustOleum Zinsser 1-2-3 Primer

And this is the paint: RustOleum “Painter’s Touch” White Gloss

The house with too many outlets.

This home has cable and phone lines in EVERY room, no joke. Why is would ever be necessary I have no idea, *hint* unless you were some sort of Russian spy and this was your teleconferencing Midwestern hub? *hint*

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“Should we have two telephones in this room?” “Why, of course! And don’t you know that yellow plates are all the rage?” WTF

The upstairs living room has surround sound capabilities, complete with faux wood plates. Sexy. Try to contain yourself.

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You might also notice that the previous owners did not believe in removing plates, or taping, before they painted. Look at the skill level.

The photo below is in the sun-room. Three different plate cover colors.

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The left plate is white (we replaced it before the photo was taken) the middle plate was all corroded and gross, plus I have no idea what those hook-ups are even for, it is now a blank white plate.

Check out this lovely addition. Not only is it off-white, but it also has a decorative wainscoting detail and rusty old screws. Wonder whats behind this?

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Check me out.

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Yep, just a random hole. Because the plate was just too good to pass up.

Here is a look at the differences in switches we’re adding. We should also note, that the off-white switches wouldn’t bother us so much if a majority of them weren’t so dirty/sticky/gross.

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Left: Old and busted, Right: New Hotness.

So there you have it! We’re lucky that plates, switches outlets are so affordable, since we have many more to go! We don’t yet have a photo, but we’re also replacing all the off-white/yellow outlets as well.

Thanks for checking in! – Sara