picture this

I'm ashamed to admit the amount of procrastination I'm capable of. When we had our new heating/cooling system installed we decided to move the location of the thermostat to the other side of the wall to open up a nice piece of real estate in the living room. What was left was this.

I needed to fill this up with joint compound and smooth it out to the depth of the rest of the wall, which I admit from the pic above isn't particularly exciting. The pics below are what are the real prize, at least in my eyes. This painting by a local artist has been sitting around for the past year waiting for me to get off my butt to fill and paint the hole in the wall. I bought some picture cord and celtic inspired bronze hooks from rejuvenation which I think are pretty swanky. I think it complements the room with a touch of old house charm. You don't see that kind of thing anymore. Looking at the pics I think it might be a tad too high, but I'll let my wife worry about the aesthetics.

Check that hardware.. :)

in the dark

So I'm washing my hands in the bathroom the other day and I hear a pop and flash down the hall. It took a second to register what happened, but there was glass on the floor amongst a red hot glow. It's not common for light bulbs to go exploding now is it? Remember how happy I was about the tulip shades I installed in the upstairs hall fixture? I'll be much happier when I know they won't randomly explode. Suffice to say, this little bad boy is getting rewired. A burned down house wouldn't make for an interesting house blog now would it? One look at the frayed wiring and it's pretty obvious why this thing never worked quite right.

I always wondered whether the fixture was original to the house. It certainly looked old and without anything else to go by I figured nobody would go through the trouble to put a fixture with missing shades that was old, but not 1914 old. Judging by the tag on the inside, it's plausible. After a little research, I found that Underwriters Laboratories has been around since 1894 so I can't dismiss the possibility. Certainly after getting these awesome shades I will treat it that way -- I love this fixture.

chuco from space

Found this pic taken by an astronaut from space. Thought it looked kinda cool -- kinda crazy that some ~3 million people live here in the borderplex.