Dining Room Light

Finally!  Goodbye horrible ceiling fan, hello pretty late-Victorian reproduction light!  Who puts a ceiling fan in a dining room?  The mind reels.

In case you can't tell how ugly it is, here's a closeup:

Unfortunately this one didn't come in very focused.  In case you don't speak hundred year old house, I have translated for you.

Yeah, that's right, gas pipe.  When I bought the fixture, which is a gas light reproduction, I thought it would be period-appropriate to the house, but I didn't anticipate having to actually deal with leftover infrastructure (I should have known better).  After trying and failing with the angle grinder and dremmel, Jason broke out the sawsall.

After that, we were able to install a new ceiling box and then the new light.  So pretty!

New Light Switches

Push-button light switches!  (Shout-out to Adam/Lisa/Lois for giving them to us!)  We finally got around to buying switch plates and installing them.  I wasn't a fan of the brass finish at first, but with the stripped doorknobs and the dark wood, they look really nice:

Here's a close-up:

2009 Recap

• Replaced the beam
• Cut down all the scrageldy, half-dead trees and bushes
• Took out all the stumps (so much work it gets its own bullet point)
• Landscaped back yard, planted garden, bought hammock
  
• Painted front porch, installed porch swing (2 major life goals now accomplished)
  
• Installed clay brick pavers in front
• Landscaped front yard
• New roof
  
• Demo'd bedroom closets, framed in attic access
  
• Rewired master bedroom
• Drywalled master bedroom
• Refinished master bedroom and hallway floors, as well as bedroom and closet doors/trim
• Trimmed out bay windows in dining room
• Demo'd downstairs half bath

Punch list, 2010

• Install new ceiling lights
• Restore downstairs bathroom
• Refinish and install new front door
  
• Repair foundation of back porch
• Install new door & windows on back porch
• Squirrel-proof garden (or eliminate squirrels)
• Finish stripping and then refinish downstairs trim (yeah, right)
• Install shoe moulding
  
• Rebuild stairs (a girl can dream...)
  

Downstairs Bathroom

Originally looked like this. The wall tile in no way matched the floor tile, other than both being in the greenish family, though they appear to nearly match in the photo. The wall tile represents pretty accurately here, but the floor tiles are sage/forest green, and clashed horribly with the walls.

Then, even though it pained me to paint the wall tile, it looked so much better:

And now...

Deathcicle

The Deathcicle started off about 5" thick, hanging off the gutter at the corner of the house, with an auxiliary cicle on the phone line. I wasn't able to photograph it, but the next day the original Deathcicle had given up the ghost, giving birth to this slimmer, yet more ominous version. It ends about a foot and a half from your head, which is made even more unnerving by the giant hump of solid ice you have to skitter across underneath it. It's our very own sword of Damocles.

The drainpipe on the other side of the house is pretty impressive too. My neighbor's is even worse but I felt weird taking pictures of her house so you just have to use your imagination.

The Sewer, Again

So, our brand-spanking-new sewer line started backing up. It started the day we did 3 loads of laundry and ran the dishwasher twice, so we thought that we had just overloaded the system. Except in the coming days and weeks, it took less and less to get a backup, and eventually we noticed that there was (brace yourself) toilet paper outside in the stairwell, having washed up from the drain. Luckily, that was the ONLY visible evidence of grossness. Then, eventually, it got to be that one load of laundry did it, and by Thanksgiving flushing the toilet a few times in not-so-rapid succession did it too.

We had a guy out on Saturday after Thanksgiving to rot out the line. He got a 4" and 6" spinny cutter head through, but it was still, in industry terms, "peanut butter." He wanted to come back later and shoot a high-pressure jet of water through to clear the line so he can camera it. Oh, and that'll be $800, on top of the $200 (at a discount, because it didn't work!) that the day's rotting cost.

I had been planning on taking Monday off work, but the guy could only come out on Tuesday so I sadly trudged to work on Monday and took Tuesday off. Well, come Tuesday, the machine is broken so he can't come. Argh! Remembering that our realtor, Agnes, had reccommended a plumber, I said let's just call these guys and if they can come today, let's do it.

When I called them, the owner was very suspicious about the jetting, and asked if I had been dealing with a reputable plumber, because jetting seemed an extreme way to solve to problem to him. He said he'd call his supervisor, who would contact the teams and then get back to me as to whether they could come out. The supervisor called, and was equally mystified by the jetting. He said they could probably get some guys out in the afternoon, which they did.

The guys were able to use their camera and do some cutting, discovering that there was a giant clump of roots right where the new pipe left off, under the sidewalk. (The city takes over on the other side of the sidewalk, natch.) They were able to cut through the roots, and reccommended a root-killing something-or-other that you put down your drains every 3 months or so to, uh, kill roots.

Laundry-doing, dish-washing, long shower-taking, and toilet-flushing recommenced, and there was much rejoicing.

New Lamp

Hey look, we bought a lamp!

We were starting to feel the effects of winter in Chicago, especially since the first floor gets virtually no natural light, thanks to ill-placed trees and a big porch.