The electrical fun continued yesterday, after a semi-warm shower (no, the heating/hot water system isn’t really “fixed” yet, though the plumber is here again this afternoon, and I hear that a service man from the manufacturing company will come on Monday to look at the system. Sheesh.) which made me feel slightly better about the world after the midnight millipede visit. So here’s the before pic:

(except that it’s really an after pic because I forgot to take one while the light was still attached to the ceiling, which is why you see it on the carpeted floor ) The light itself is less than three feet wide in an 18′ x 24′ room, hence the feeling of sitting in a cave.

Anyway, remember that I said the new light wasn’t heavy, and that I could therefore do it myself? Wrong. I swear the sucker was almost as heavy as the big chandelier in the dining room! I was already halfway into the job by the time I figured that out, so I just finished it, but it was hard!

I did have to have GuitarGirl help me hold the heavy part up to the ceiling so that I could wire it, and LittleOne was here to hand tools and parts to me while I was up on the chair, so truthfully, a little help was needed. It was good for the girls to see that you can do these kinds of things yourself, and maybe you need a little help, but that help doesn’t have to be in manly form.

Two hours after beginning the job, I had a new light hanging from the ceiling in the studio:

It’s a modern looking thing, for sure, but as long as I have light, I don’t much care what it looks like up there. It is kind of cool though, since it’s about nine feet long overall, plus the two and a half foot extension on the end, and then there’s the pendant light as well.

All in all, the output of the new light is only 35 watts more than the old one, but the old one really was past it’s prime and might even be a fire hazard anyway. The new light has seven spots that are 20 watts each, plus the hanging pendant light that’s 35 watts, and the lighting is spread out over more of the room area, so it’s a bit better than it was. I even managed to position the pendant lamp right over one of my tables.

I’ve ordered new bulbs that will hopefully not be so yellow, and not lose so much light out the back either. If that doesn’t work, I may have to spring for the daylight halogens that I managed to find online yesterday, but they’re a bit pricey, so I thought I’d try the cheap ones first!

Still on the list of electrical to-dos: lighting for the design wall area, switching the ceiling lamp in the kitchen for the one in the master bedroom (they’ll look better that way), and installing an combination outlet/switch (as opposed to just a light switch) in ITMan’s bathroom so he can plug things in in there. sigh A woman’s work is never done.

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Today’s issues revolved around the lighting in various parts of the house. Tuesday I decided to take a look at the ceiling light in the studio to see if I could improve the output level any by putting brighter bulbs in or adjusting the direction of the fixtures. The light has four small, adjustable halogen lamps on it that can be rotated and aimed up or down so that the light falls where needed. Simple, right?

Wrong. I checked the bulbs first, and while they were only 35 watt bulbs, I didn’t have any of the right variety in a higher wattage on hand to replace them with. So I tried to adjust the direction of the lights, and spread them out just a tad more, which seemed to work okay for a short while.

Late Tuesday evening, one of the bulbs went out. It just sort of faded away, and when I climbed back up there to check on it, the fixture was way to hot to touch right next to that particular bulb. The other areas of the fixture weren’t that hot, so after fiddling with it a bit longer and having it fade in and out repeatedly while providing some strange sorts of humming noises, I decided that the owners left us a bum fixture, and it would have to be replaced before it burned the house down.

Sheesh. All I did was adjust the thing! It wasn’t putting out enough light anyway, so fine. Off to the hardware store I went on Wednesday morning to look at lighting, figuring I’d also shop for hardware bits to make it possible to connect the American chandelier we have to the very German wiring and ceiling in the dining room. We’ve been waiting for the owner to come and do this like he said he would, but I’ve been tired of the waiting for at least the last week or so. Waiting and patience are not my strong points, though ITMan would have happily waited forever, I guess, and continued to eat in the dark. He’ll eat just about anything anyway, so seeing it probably isn’t strictly a necessity, but I need the visual as well as the gustative, thanks.

You must understand that I’m not Ellie the Electrician here. Plugging things in is one thing, and I can hook up computers, networks, and A/V equipment all day long, but both the chandelier and the light in the studio have to be hard wired. ITMan doesn’t know how to do it either, and 220v will knock you off a ladder onto your butt, so he’s not really all that up for the game. But hey, nobody else iwas going to do it obviously, and the Internet has everything, right? Read the rest of this entry »

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I promised myself that I wouldn’t bore you with further tales of settling into the new house, or the lovely day I had today visiting with the washer repair man, the transportation inspector from the Army, and the plumber, all of whom were here today, trooping through the house in wet shoes (it’s raining here in Germany, go figure!) to see me for various reasons. So, on to more soothing, quilty topics:

See? Sooooothing to the eyes. This is the base palette that I’ve chosen to work with for my next project. I felt a bit of trepidation about this project—well, to be perfectly honest I think I still do, but I’m diving in anyway, as per the usual way of things. I’m not a “neutral” person, you see. I like color, lots and lots of color, in varying shades and hues all together, all the time. BUT, I like the colors to blend well, like the crisp, slightly sweet taste of a cool Cosmo on a warm spring afternoon. Mmmmm.

What? Oh, sorry, got a little sidetracked there. Ahem. Similarly, I’m absolutely NOT neutral on other things either. Most things, I either like it a lot or I don’t like it at all, with none of that namby-pamby-in-between-ambivalence-thing going on. This goes for just about everything: foods, politics, books, people, cars, movies, etc., etc. If I don’t have a “like it or hate it” reaction to something, it’s probably because it’s just not on my radar and I haven’t thought about it at all. Read the rest of this entry »

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