We finally got our new couch and a couple of new chairs for our living room delivered yesterday!  Here’s a picture of them:

Our New Furniture

We think the new furniture looks a lot nicer in the living room than our old couch did, and it’s pretty comfortable too.  The only thing we’re really noticing is how out-of-place all the rest of the furniture in the room looks now that we have the new pieces.  I can’t wait to see how it will look with the new, less-orange, tables when they get delivered tomorrow!

We’re so excited to finally have a couple of furniture deliveries scheduled this week for items we’ve ordered over the last few months.  We have a new sofa and a couple of upholstered chairs coming on Wednesday … and a new coffee table and credenza (for behind the sofa) being delivered on Friday.

The Furniture Being Delivered This Week!!

After this, we’re still waiting for the leather chair and ottoman that’s likely to not be in until next Spring (ug!), a couple more tables that are expected to be in next week, a dining room set that’s supposed to be here just before Christmas, and a couple more upholstered chairs should come the week after Christmas.  We’re so excited to see the new furniture in our house – I hope it looks as good in our house as it did in the stores!!

We ordered some new furniture for our living room back on September 19th.  At the time, they told us that the fabric pieces we ordered would take 60-90 days to come in and the leather chair and ottoman would probably be more like 90-120 days.  Since it had been almost 2 months, I called yesterday to ask about the status of our order and see if they could give me some firmer dates for when our furniture would be in.  Turns out the fabric furniture is in the local warehouse already, but the leather stuff (which wasn’t considered custom) has been back-ordered and probably won’t be in until the end of February or beginning of March – almost 6 months after we ordered it!

Because it’s going to be so long before we’d get the leather furniture, they’re giving us the option to take the same chair and ottoman in a lighter brown color.  They have the chair in the lighter color in the local warehouse already, but we’d still have to order the ottoman and that would still take until the end of February to come in, so I’m not sure we’ve gained much.

Even for the fabric furniture, which is already here (actually a little ahead of schedule), it sounds like it will be a couple weeks before it will be delivered … and that’s if I go in tomorrow to pay the balance for that furniture.  Once I pay for the rest of it, they said they’d release the order to the warehouse.  Then, within 3-5 business days, I should expect to receive a phone call from the warehouse manager who will schedule delivery sometime in the following 5-10 business days.  That means there’s still a chance we won’t have the furniture before Thanksgiving … and it’s probably no more than 10 miles from our house right now!  Insane!

I think the thing that bothers me the most about the whole thing is that every other industry is working to become more efficient and speed up their manufacturing and delivery time – except for the furniture industry.  It doesn’t seem to matter where you order it from or how custom it is – it just takes forever … and even when the furniture comes in, it’s likely to have something wrong with it.

We’re still deciding what to do about the leather chair & ottoman that won’t be in until February/March.  Even if we cancel the order and go find something we like at another furniture store, we’re starting the process all over again – and it might still be February before we actually get the furniture …  Ug.

It’s been almost 4 months, but the updates to our dining room are finally done!  Thought we’d share some “Before & After” pictures of the changes we’ve made:

The "Before" Picture

The "After" Picture

We started work in the dining room back in July by removing the old wallpaper.  Once the wallpaper was down, we ran new wiring for the wall sconces to replace the old knob-and-tube.  We then had the walls skim-coated with a fresh layer of plaster to fill in some holes and cracks and smooth everything out.  With the plaster work complete, we installed picture frame molding below the chair rail and then painted the upper portion of the walls gray and the bottom the same shade of white as the rest of the trim in the house.

We still think the room needs some work from a decorating perspective, but we’re so happy to finally be done with the other updates.

This year, we decided to try something different for leaf removal and bought a John Deere Power Flow bagger for our lawn mower.  They come in 7 and 14 bushel models and we decided on the larger of the two.  So far, it’s done a good job of picking up the leaves and grass clippings and we’re pretty happy with the purchase.

New Power Flow Bagger

The power flow piece is a fan powered by the mower deck and helps to blow the clippings into the three mesh bags.  To empty the bags, the hopper is hinged and the bags slide out.  There’s even a gauge to show when bagger is getting full.

Power Flow

Open Hopper and Mesh Bags

Air Flow Indicator

We’re starting to think about replacing our water heater with a new tankless one.  The water heater we have now is still working fine, but it’s started making all kinds of loud cracking and popping noises as it’s heating the water.  It also looks like it was manufactured in 1996, so it’s getting pretty old and we imagine it won’t be too much longer before it stops working completely.

The main reason why we’re thinking about installing the new one now, though, is because the water heater, which used to be located near the old boiler, is now in a room by itself.  When the previous owners replaced the boiler with a new furnace, they also relocated it to a more central location in the basement.  As part of the project to replace the water heater, we’d like to move it to the new utility room also to free up some space where it currently is and help to clean up the mess of plumbing in the basement.  Because we’ll be relocating the water heater, we expect there will be more plumbing work involved than what would be required for a typical replacement, so we think it might be a good idea to get started on it while our water heater is still working rather than waiting until we have no hot water at all.

Our current water heater and the mess of plumbing that goes with it.

For the new water heater, we’re thinking about getting a tankless one that can be mounted on the wall in the utility room.  We like this option because of the increased energy efficiency of a tankless water heater, but also because of the space it saves.  Our plan is to relocate the water heater to the new utility room and mount it on the wall near the furnace.  Access to gas and water lines will be fairly easy from this location and routing the exhaust out the side of the house shouldn’t be a problem either.

The location for the new water heater.

We’re still researching the different brands of tankless water heaters to try to make a decision on what we think would be best for our application.  As long as we pick one with an efficiency greater than or equal to .80, though, we’ll be eligible for an income tax credit equal to 30% of the total cost of the water heater and installation (up to a max of $1500).  We’re also looking into any rebates we can get from our local utility provider that might help offset the cost and help us make the decision about whether or not now is the right time to start this project.

After being in our house for about 2 years and having basically no furniture in our living room during that time, we finally decided it was time to start furniture shopping.

Our living room is pretty large (about 30′ long x 16′ wide), but really long and narrow with lots of doorways that make furniture placement a challenge, so I started by putting together a floorplan for the room to have a better idea of the size and scale of furniture that would work in the space.  Here’s the plan I came up with:

Floor Plan for Living Room

We’ll have a small, apartment-size sofa (about 78″ in length) and a pair of chairs in front of the fireplace with a coffee table in the middle and a sofa table behind the couch for lamps and a little additional storage.  Since the room is so narrow and there are doors on either side of the fireplace that require us to leave a couple of paths through the room, we had to pick some smaller pieces for this conversation area.  On the right side of the diagram (the front of the house), we’ll have a chair and ottoman in front of the built in display cabinets to add some additional seating and we’re planning to move the piano to this half of the room as well where it will fit better along the wall common with the family room.  On the left side of the diagram (back of the house), we’re thinking of having a standard height table large enough for playing board games or reading a newspaper, with a couple of upholstered chairs that will be easy to reposition around the table.  We’re also thinking of having some taller bookshelves / display cabinets to help balance out the built ins on the other side of the room.

We already had the piano, but all of the other pieces in the floor plan are things we needed to shop for, so we started looking around at the local furniture stores a month or so ago and we finally decided on some upholstered furniture that we thought would be the right size/scale for the room.  Here are some pictures of the pieces we bought:

New Furniture for Living Room

The new apartment-size sofa (upper left) will be covered in a brown linen fabric that’s a little darker in person than it looks in the picture.  The matching chairs (upper right) will be covered in a coordinating textured fabric that’s a blend of tan and ivory.  We also purchased a dark brown leather chair and ottoman that will go in front of the display cases and some coordinating pillows in the fabric on the lower left.

Everything we bought is pretty neutral, but I think it will look nice in our living room once it finally comes in.  We were really hopeful that we would have the furniture before Christmas, maybe even in time to have a Christmas party now that we’ll have places for people to sit, but it sounds like it will be a good 60-90 days before we should expect to receive the new furniture, so we might be lucky to have it by Christmas.  We’re still working to pick out some coordinating tables and a couple more chairs.  Hopefully we can get those on order soon as well!

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working to paint the dining room (finally!)  It’s taken a lot longer than I expected, but I’m really happy with the way it’s turning out.

New Dining Room Paint

I love the color gray we finally decided on for above the chair rail.  It’s Sherwin Williams Pavestone (SW7642).  I was a little worried to start with that it would come off as too blue or too tan, but it definitely looks gray without being too dark or too stark against the white.  The bottom half of the room is Sherwin Willams Modest White (SW6084), which is the same as the trim color in the rest of the house.

I started by priming all of the freshly plastered walls with a tinted Loxon primer that’s meant for concrete block walls.  At first, I thought this was overkill considering that the walls were only skim coated, but we’ve since had a problem with paint peeling off of the walls in the foyer because they weren’t primed properly, so we’re hoping this will prevent the same problem in the dining room.  The biggest challenge with the Loxon primer was that we hadn’t planned on using a different primer for the walls than for the new wood trim pieces for the picture frame molding, so I would up having to cut in around all of the trim , which was pretty time consuming.

After the primer was dry, I’ve put one layer of top coat on all of the walls.  The gray part above the chair rail is a low-sheen eg shel finish.  I really like how deep the color looks without being shiny.  One coat on top of the tinted primer gave us really consistent color and finish, so I think I’m done painting above the chair rail.  For the portion below the chair rail, we decided to paint it in a semi-gloss enamel like all the rest of the woodwork in the house.  One coat looks good color wise, but I’m still deciding if I want to put another coat on to try to even out the finish.  I’m not sure if it’s anything anyone but me will ever notice, but I’m afraid it’ll drive me nuts if I know it’s not perfect and I don’t fix it.

I can’t wait to finally be done with all of the painting, get the light fixtures and outlet covers back up, and move the furniture back in.  I think it’s going to be a huge improvement over the old wallpaper!

We’re just finishing up a project to install picture frame molding below the existing chair rail in our dining room.  Thought I’d post what we did to install it in case it’s useful to someone else.

Step 1

Decide on the spacing to use for the picture frame molding so that it’s fairly consistent & symmetrical around the room.  Don’t worry too much about the placement of outlets, etc. in relation to where the molding will go.

For our dining room, since the chair rail is so low, we decided to use the following spacing for long, skinny rectangles on the wall:

• 2″ from the bottom of the chair rail to the top of the picture frame molding
• 2″ from the bottom of the picture frame molding to the top of the base board
• 4″ between vertical pieces of picture frame molding and corners, door casing, etc.

For help visualizing what would look right, use painters tape where the molding will be.  (Just remember to remove it relatively soon to avoid damage to the wall!)

Painters Tape to Visualize Spacing

Step 2

Use a compass to draw guide lines on the wall where the molding will go.  These lines should be parallel to any existing trim, etc. in the room.

Draw Guidelines for Molding

Step 3

Using the guide lines drawn on the wall, individually measure the exact length needed for each piece of trim.

We found that it’s not uncommon for each side of the frame to be a slightly different length, most probably because the house is old and not everything is exactly square.  We decided it was more important that the frames look level and square on the wall next to the existing trim rather than that they actually are level and square, so we used the exact measurements taken from the wall for each piece rather than assuming anything.

Step 4

For each piece measured, cut the ends of the molding at a 45 degree angle.  For this, we used a compound miter saw.  Even though our frames weren’t completely square in some cases, we only had one where we had to modify the angle from 45 degrees.

In the case where an outlet was positioned in the path of the picture frame molding, we cut it at a 45 degree angle and left a gap of about 3/4″ between the edge of the molding and the outlet covers.

Molding Around Outlets

Step 5

Starting with the top side of the frame, attach the molding to the wall with construction adhesive and a nail gun so that it’s aligned with the guide lines.  After the top side is attached, install the two vertical pieces of molding, followed by the bottom piece.  For each piece, we found it really helpful to test fit first to make sure the length and corner miters aligned correctly.

Our walls are plaster and we were concerned at first about using a nail gun for fear that it might cause the plaster to shatter.  We tested in a closet and didn’t have any problems, so we decided to use it for attaching the molding.  It worked great, with no damage to the wall, but we found that the construction adhesive was still needed to help the molding stay attached to the wall in the places where the wall was a little wavy.

Attaching the Molding

Step 6

With all of the molding attached to the wall, fill the nail holes, sand the edges off of the molding, and apply caulk around the edges of each frame to fill in any gaps between the molding and the wall.  We also used a really small amount of caulk to help fill in and smooth out the corners of the frames.

Step 7

Prime and paint the walls & new molding.

Since our walls were plaster, we needed to prime the walls with a concrete primer and the molding with a wood primer.  If we do this project again, we’d probably choose to prime the walls and molding before installing the molding to avoid all of the cutting in that was needed for the 2 different types of primers.

We chose to paint our picture frame molding and the wall behind it a semi-gloss enamel in the same color as the rest of the trim in our house.  For the outlet covers, we bought some unfinished wood ones that are being primed and painted the same color as the molding so they’ll blend in nicely.

Painting the Picture Frame Molding

A little over a year ago, we built a new computer to use as a home theater PC (HTPC) in our family room.  The PC runs Gentoo linux, with the MythTV front end  - we use it as a DVR.  We’ve made a couple of improvements since we initially built the computer to set it up with a wireless-N ethernet bridge for streaming content from a server and to set up an RF remote control so we don’t have to use the keyboard for navigation.

One way in which our MythTV setup wasn’t quite ideal yet, though, was that we still needed to open the TV cabinet to turn the HTPC on and off separately from the TV.  We’ve done some reading on how to set the system up to power up/shut down based on key presses from the RF remote control, but it’s a rather complex setup.  Tonight while we were walking through Sears, though, we saw this Craftsman Automatic Power Switch that is intended for use with power tools and we got the idea to give it a try with our MythTV system in the family room.

Automatic Power Switch

We have the TV plugged in to the outlet labeled “Power Tool” and the ethernet bridge & HTPC plugged into the two “Accessory” outlets. After updating the BIOS settings on the PC to have it boot on power, the computer now starts booting as soon as the TV turns on.  When we turn the TV off, we also cut power to the PC and the ethernet bridge to avoid any parasite draw from those devices.  I suppose it works similarly to a stereo receiver with plugs on the back for other components to turn on and off at the same time, but since we don’t have a receiver in the family room, the power switch does the trick.

We were a little concerned that using a device intended for power tools wouldn’t work correctly for a television because the TV might either not pull enough power when the it was on or the it might pull too much power when it was off.  Luckily, though, that turned out to not be the case.  The whole television set-up is a lot more user-friendly now that we don’t have to separately turn on and shut down the PC and we like the fact that it’s a lot greener solution than what we had before because it eliminates any power draw from the ethernet bridge and HTPC when they’re not in use.  For about $20, we think it was a good buy.