Waterfall chandelier

Two hours before our out-of-town Christmas guests showed up, I hear a drip-drip coming from the dining room. I walk in, looking at the cat water fountain. It looks fine. I then look at the chandelier. It's dripping water. Oh dear. I first run upstairs to try and find the source. Everything appears normal. Crap. I then run to the basement and turn off the power to the chandelier. By this time, J has moved the Christmas display out from under the water-logged chandelier.

I go upstairs again to try to locate the source of the water. It doesn't appear to be coming from the bathroom. My next suspicion is the water-filled baseboard heater pipes. I had been using a bleed valve (located roughly above the chandelier) to remove air from the heating pipes. I re-tightened the bleed valve and headed back downstairs. As a precaution I also turned the heat off, to reduce the water pressure.

It became clear that the chandelier was very, very wet. In fact, one of the glass ornaments hanging from chandelier was full of water. Fortunately the metal spring holding it up was quite strong. So, the chandelier had to come down. After about 20 minutes, we got to here:

Then I realized the entire chandelier was full of water and had to come apart. Ugh. So, then we get to here:

Then, here:

Two days later, the ceiling stayed dry and the chandelier went back up. The best guess we have is that I left the bleeder valve slightly open. Hopefully that is what happened. I really don't want to pay a plumber to rip our ceiling open.

Happy Holidays!

It's been a hectic holiday season of decorating the house and wrapping present after present. Last year we decorated a little but were still reeling from the move. This year, we could devote more time and resource to making the house look festive. And so I present a photo montage of what's been keeping us busy:

You can't see that well from the pictures, but the two upper windows have swags of colored lights. There are also colored lights wound around our lamppost, now that I'm qualified to operate solar-powered lights. And if you look closely, the little tree to the right of the house has some over-size Christmas balls hanging from it. Seeing those indoor/outdoor ornaments at Costco just about made my day, since a similar set from Pottery Barn was not in the budget.

Our other splurge this year? Timers for the lights. Because seriously who wants to plug in all the lights in each window upstairs as well outside and all the random inside sets every day? We still keep forgetting to plug in the snowmen over the piano, the window village, and the lights on the sideboard, which are all not on a timer. Even without those little extras turned on, it sure is nice to come home to a lighted Christmas tree and lawn.

Happy Holidays!

(Oh, and stay tuned as we redesign the blog's layout for the New Year. Please be patient as we fiddle with all the new templates and settle on something that works.)

Some Shelves

The house is filled with holiday cheer but since D has yet to take pretty pictures with his SLR and tripod, we'll settle for a post on shelves instead.

Since April, I've wanted to solve my dilemma on how to create a nightstand that wouldn't block access to my under-bed pull-out storage. First I desperately wanted with drawers (storage is a big theme for me, like Ikea and hanging pictures). Then I just wanted something to put my alarm clock on within reach. First I tried using a plant stand:

But it didn't really stay put when it needed to be there and it didn't move easily when I needed to move it (when getting things out from the drawers, for example).

Then we decided to buy a 5' length of reclaimed wood from a tree that was cut down in our area, sold at a sort of thrift store version of Home Depot, for our window bench. When we cut it down to size, there was a piece left over perfect as a nightstand. So here is our bench and nightstand, all cut from the same board:

For the nightstand, the brackets, like so much in our house, are from Ikea. A product so cheap and small that it doesn't appear to be on the website. And because the curtains are a little too long (because we weren't willing to shell out for custom lengths), we had to sort of bubble them out. But I actually like the effect.

D cut the pieces and we both took turns sanding (SOOOO much easier to sand down a flat object with an orbital sander, unlike chair legs by hand!):

Then, since these pieces are not going to be used heavily, I tried coating them with paste wax instead of the more noxious, hard to handle polyurethane and polyacrylic I usually use. It dried in 15 minutes and, even with a few coats, only took about an hour and half from start to finish.

Because the wood isn't completely straight, it's not flush with the wall in the window area. We painted some plywood white and nailed it down first, so that there wouldn't be a gap. Actually, the extra drapery helps hide the plywood, which you can see when I pull it up:

D did an excellent job cutting the piece at the corner, too. So thanks to one piece of $60 wood and a little on plywood and wax, we ended up with two nice shelves that go with our "foresty" bedroom look! And I can finally reach my alarm clock in the morning!