Landscape Lighting and Bathroom Floor

I've Worked on a few different projects the last couple days, first off I put in some new landscape lighting around the house and up the side walkway. I had happened on another great deal at Lowes, they had some of the nice metal low voltage lights on clearance for 75% off! I like these inexpensive projects!


Another pic of the lights and also some of the flowers my mom came over and planted a week ago. They aren't very big yet, but should be growing pretty fast with the rain we've been getting.


Got the $5 light hung up too. I put it above the back staircase in the hallway.


This one has been a long time coming... Last year we had some water damage to the flooring in the bathroom from the tub leaking. It caused the flooring to swell and some of the wood overlay was buckling. I ended up pulling up all the oak flooring and thats how it sat for the last 6-7 months, with just the primered subfloor. As I am planning on eventually replacing the vanity and doing some nice tile work (couple years from now). I didn't want to put a lot of time or money into the floor at the moment. So for now I figured I had to at least get some sort of flooring down in there so I went with some vinyl tiles that resemble travertine. I bought 2 colors and layed it down in a checkerboard pattern. It turned out pretty nice looking.

Deal of the Year & Patio Table Update

We were at Lowe's over the weekend picking up a few things for the house, when I saw this chandelier setting on one of the clearance tables. It was marked down from $159 to 50% off, then marked to $25.00 and lastly to $5.00! At first glance it looked terrible, it had these little lampshades on each bulb adorned with a bright green ribbon and fake roses. They looked entirely out of place. It also had a nice layer of dust on it from hanging in the store as a display model. Upon closer inspection, it was easy to see that the shades were just clipped onto the light bulbs and could be taken off in 2 seconds. After removing them, it turns out its actually a nice looking chandelier that we couldn't pass up for $5.00! The funny part is now the shades we hated so much are hanging on a chandelier in my mom's house! They actually look completely different when they MATCH the light fixture!


The holiday weekend turned out to be incredibly hot and sunny. Nice weather, but standing in full sun working on the patio table turned out to be not as much fun as I had hoped. I wasn't quite able to get it finished, but I'm not too far off now. In this pic, the outside border is complete and I'm working on my layout for the slate pieces to fill in the rest of the field.


Getting some of the cuts made and piecing it all together. The little white "X"'s are plastic spacers to help me keep all my joints at 1/4" wide.


While I was working on the table, the kids were working on their "sculptures", they would barter over who got which scrap piece. On the top is Miles, Zander's is below.

I hope everyone had a good Memorial Weekend!

Patio Table

Here is yet another project I started. Fixing the patio table, actually more like rebuilding. What happened was last fall we bought a new glass top table. A couple weeks later after a really windy night, we awoke to see the deck covered in shattered glass. I had a pic of it, but can't find it now. So anyway, instead of buying a new table, I decided to just build a new top for it. I started with a sheet of 3/4" thick OSB cut to size, then added some 1"x2" edge boards.

Here's where I left off tonight, the table is covered in backer board, and I started cutting the tile and laying it out. The tan is a travertine marble, and the green is just a porcelain tile that matches the chairs. Tomorrow (maybe) I will start cutting the tile that goes around the star to cover the rest of the table, it is a darker brown slate.

Insteon Lighting Network

There's not really a whole lot I can show with pictures for this one, but its pretty cool so I thought it was worth mentioning. I set up all the lighting in the house to be on a network, as in you can turn on and off lighting from multiple places or even with the computer or an iphone (if I had one). Basically each switch is a little computer, it gives and recieves wireless and wired signals "talking" between each other. Now, from say the dining room, I can see what lights are on, and turn them on and off. From the kitchen lights to the upstairs hallway lights, they are all linked together. Likewise, from the master bedroom, I can see what lights are on downstairs, and turn them on or off.


The way I set it up was I worked from the back of the house forward, the kitchen is A, dining room B, etc.

Each button is backlit with an LED light. So in this switch here, the light is ON in the dining room, and also you can see how the A is lit up, meaning the kitchen light is on. Each light also is dimmable by holding the button down. With the computer software you can set lights to come on and off at specific times as well as set the rate at which it turns on or off. If in the morning you want the lights to slowly come on you could use it like an alarm clock. The bedroom light would slowly get brighter over say, a 5 minute time period.

Barrels of Fun!

We wanted to install some rainbarrels for a few reasons, to have a water source closer to the garden and another was of course, to conserve water. Even though we are on a private well, it is still nice to have a surplus of free water and not run the well pump to water the plants. As far as being closer to the garden, I put the rainbarrels on the back side of the shed. So the first step was to install gutters and downspouts on the shed. I had found some old plastic barrels on Craigslist for a good price, the barrels used to contain Mountain Dew and Pepsi syrup. You could definately smell it when you opened the caps.

The next step was drilling holes to connect the barrels together. After drilling the hole I heated up the plastic with a torch to soften it up some so it would conform to the threads on the brass coupler. I also put a bead of silicone around it just in case.


Next I connected a piece of scrap garden hose that was scavenged from a trash pile someone had set out to the road. I just used a standard stainless steel band clamp.


Here is 2 of the barrels connected together. You can also see the elevated platform I built to keep the barrels nice and level and up off the ground a little higher so the water would flow better. I set the whole thing up on cement blocks. It had to be heavy duty because when full, each barrel will weigh over 450lbs.


All three barrels in place. I had bought four, but it turned out that one had a crack in it, so if I pick up another one, there is enough room for it if I slide the middle one over. I still need to connect in the gutters from the other side of the shed, so there will be another downspout coming in on the right side of the pic. If you look closely you can see the outlet on the bottom left barrel. It is a standard hose connection. The last step was to put a piece of screen over the inlet opening on the barrel so it doesn't turn into a mosquito breeding haven.


Before I built the platform I had let one of the barrels fill up with rain as a test . I had to drain it, so I drilled a hole for the connector. You can see the water has a decent amount of pressure with the barrel full.

Master Bathroom Shelf

Well, I'm back to working on the bathroom again! In the master bath there was some dead space beneath the stairs up to the attic so I decided to put a shelf in above where the tub will be. It will be a good place to store towels, etc. Zander thought it was a fun place to play in.


With the arched top I had to put in a bunch of extra framing so when I drywall around the curve I will have plenty of places to screw into.


The curved opening mimics the arch of the dome in the bathroom ceiling.

Lighted Crown Molding

In Zanders room I installed lighted dropped crown molding to make it extra special for him. He requested "blue" lights to go along with his favorite color that he wanted his room painted.

First I took a 5" base molding, that will be mounted upside down, and attached 45 degree backer blocks to it for attaching the crown molding. I cut an extra 45 off the edge of the blocks that will form a "V" channel for the rope lighting once the crown molding is attached in place.


Then I mounted all these "backer boards" completely around the room, the top edge is 5" down from the ceiling.


Here's a close up, and also the first couple pieces of crown molding are in place.


Finished product!


Its hard to get a good picture, but this is how it looks at night. Pretty cool!

Water & Snow

Its been a long time coming, but the plumbing is FINALLY completely stubbed in for the master bathroom. It was such a relief to be done with that and when I turned the water on, there was only 1 leaking joint that I had to resolder. If you notice and are wondering why there are 3 water lines, it because one of them is a cold water return. This bathroom is so far from the water heater (about 70' of pipe) there would be a really long wait for hot water. To eliminate this I will be installing a recirculation pump that pumps water from the hot water line and into the cold return line. This will keep hot water in the lines so when you turn on the sink there will be warm water immediately.


Here's the tub faucet with actual WATER coming out! And no, thats not a blue bathtub.


One of the other projects I'm getting close to completing is Zanders room. Behind that drywall is the chimney. To the right of it is where I will be putting built in book shelves. At the bottom there is the heating duct, I just need to put on the last piece of drywall.


Also, we got our first snowfall of the winter tonight. Sprout was not very happy about that.

Giant hole in the ceiling!

Don't worry, it wasn't a meteor shower or a falling tree. It is an intentional hole cut by my handy saw in the master bedroom ceiling. My buddy Matt came over to help on this one, and after we got everything measured out, we cut the hole and the joists in the ceiling. We then began framing in new headers on the joists that were cut. By that time it was getting late so we called it quits for the night.

The next day I finished up the framing and got all the angled corner pieces installed.

Next it was time for drywall, and this is where I left off today.

When this is all said and done, there will be a prefabricated dome that will sit on top of this octagon. There will be lighting all the way around the octagon shining up on the dome. Originally I was going to have a circular opening, but after going to a concert at the Detroit Opera House, I liked the look of using an octagon. Here's a photo of the super elaborate ceiling.

What can I say?

The time has flown by, it was a busy summer, it came and went so fast. Seems like there was always something going on, and it wasn't usually house related! From our annual canoe trip with friends in July, to Christine and me going out to Colorado hiking in August, to a family trip to Downtown Chicago in September. I even made time to train and run a half Marathon on Sept 27th. Thats not to say I didn't get any work done on the house these last couple months either. Zanders room is drywalled and almost ready for paint and carpeting. The blower system is installed and operating on the fireplace. I designed and started planting an English garden out in the yard. Along with various other odds and ends. I will try to get my blog up to speed here shortly. In the meantime here's a few pics.

Horseback riding out in Leadville, Colorado. If you click on the pic you can see the snow covered mountains in the background.


Here's the family walking in a garden in downtown Chicago.


They had some really nice flower gardens.



And yes, here's a pic from in the house. My brother in law Russ is mudding the drywall in Zanders room.

Master Bedroom Ceiling update

Here's a quick update on my progress with the bedroom ceiling. I've wired and installed halogen recessed lighting, 2 lights in each corner. I've also began hanging the drywall. Now you can begin to see how the shape will be when it is finished. Still alot of work left though.

A closer view of one of the corners with the lighting.

Stay tuned!

Bedroom work - Construction and Demo

My dad, Nick and I worked on framing in a part of the ceiling in the master bedroom. I'm not sure what you would call it, a soffit I guess? But anyway, this new framed in area will give the ceiling some "depth" and character, as well as hold the recessed lighting. Its hard to explain exactly what it will look like, you'll just have to wait for the pics!







We did it in 4 sections, each wall 1 at a time. Unfortunately I don't have any action shots of us putting it up.



Meanwhile my mom and Jen started tearing out the plaster walls in one of the other bedrooms upstairs.

Dog Fence

I Started putting up a new fence to keep the dogs from escaping, it is really easy to install, you basically just hammer in the posts that connect the sections together and thats all there is to it!
The pile of dirt is what I've been removing from the basement, bucket by bucket, it continues to grow everyday. Where I'm piling it is a lower area that slopes down, I'm trying to make the dog area level, so once I'm done piling on the dirt I can spread some topsoil and grass seed.




Some random pics taken from around the yard...

some of the poppies are blooming.

and the violets.

On a side note, the sump crock is dug down to the proper level, just need to start digging the trenches for the drain pipe that will connect to it.