Category: House stuff

Posts related to the places I call home

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2 CeilingFan objects done, 1 more to go

Successfully managed to hang two more ceiling fans without serious injury or damage to the house. Now just one more ceiling fan to go up in the back porch and then on to the next project: installing window blinds in the office.

Ceiling fan mounted to the porch ceiling

Just one of the many things that was accomplished this weekend, including spending a whole lotta money on House Stuff. Then going back, returning some House Stuff because it wasn’t the Right Stuff, then buying even More House Stuff. So now most all the windows have something covering them, and all the rooms have fans.

So now with our left-over house money rapidly dwindling, we need to re-prioritize a few things. Fencing, hurricane shutters or plywood, grill, curtains, garage storage/shelving, lawn mower. It’s a never-ending list. With the storm season starting to gear up, plywood for the windows is the top priority for this year. Hurricane shutters will have to come later because they’re pretty pricey. The rest are still up for discussion.

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On the road to handyman-dom

Yesterday I managed to successfully hang 2 Ceiling Fans (instances of the Lighting Fixture class) without electrocuting myself. A good thing because the ceiling fans make two of our rooms look much more decorated with the bare lightbulb fixtures removed. Not electrocuting myself is an even better thing, because now I can tackle the third ceiling fan.

Ceiling Fan #3 is going to be a little more challenging because to complete the task, I’ll have to try to not electrocute myself (again), and try to not topple off the ladder that’s holding me 4 meters up in the air while I’m trying to install said ceiling fan.

Now admittedly, installing ceiling fans isn’t exactly rocket science. But when you’re someone like me with plenty of theoretical knowledge but little practical experience, getting to do stuff like this is fun. It’s even better when it ends up working. It just rocks when you do it without sustaining any major injury.

After this (barring any serious injury from hanging Ceiling Fan #3) will be two more Ceiling Fan objects for the back porch and a new lighting fixture for the breakfast area. The new lighting fixture shouldn’t be too difficult. It’s just another instance of the Lighting Fixture class (just like the Ceiling Fan object), so the properties and methods should be similar.

All I need to do is avoid electrocuting myself and I’ll be cooking with fire!

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Go up the ladder to the roof…

so I can change all of those light bulbs.

One of the problems with having a house with vaulted 15′ ceilings is that you need a Really Tall Ladder to change the light bulbs. Or install ceiling fans. Or change the batteries in the smoke detectors.

So a ladder was my first big purchase of homeowner accessories. Not just any plain old ladder either. There were very specific criteria for the ladder I would need:

  • Get me up to at least 15′ as a stepladder so I can reach those bulbs/smoke detectors.
  • Compact enough to fit into the car so I can get it home from the store
  • Stable enough to keep me up 15′ in the air without toppling over
  • Reasonably portable

So after some indecision over what to pick, I ended up with one of these multi-purpose multi-use folding contorting ladders. It’s basically one smaller ladder that slides inside another ladder. Folds in half for use as a step ladder or for storage, or stretch it out to use as one big ladder. Pull the inside ladder out, attach a couple of hinges to the other two parts and you have two step ladders or a platform for some scaffolding or workbench type thing.

A little bit on the heavy side, but pretty easy to use. Has a good solid feel and seems to be solidly constructed, and the locks are beefy and feel secure.

So now I can get up to the ceiling and change light bulbs, batteries, and put up ceiling fans. Or go outside and put up eavestroughs, climb onto the roof, put lights up around the house or whatever else I need to do up in the air.

I’ll give this thing 8/10, losing points mostly for being so expensive.

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Where the heck did all these boxes come from??!!

Took the movers two trips to transport all our crap to the new house on Saturday. I just don’t know where all this stuff came from! I know we didn’t have nearly this much stuff when we moved into the apartment. Going out, it seemed like we moved almost twice as much stuff as we started with and there’s still some stuff left at the apartment we need to go back for. I’m sure part of the problem was just inefficient packing. There was a lot of stuff we probably could have tossed instead of moving, but packing ended up being kind of last-minute and rushed.

The rest of the weekend was spent making trips back and forth to Lowe’s/Home Depot and unpacking.

And unpacking.

And more unpacking.

We’re still not done yet.

And we need a big trash can so the garbage people can haul our trash away.

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Moving day tomorrow!

Tonight begins a flurry of packing and boxing so that the movers can cart away our stuff to the house. We probably won’t get everything packed up to move over, but as long as all the furniture and boxes get moved over it will be fine. The left overs we should be able to stuff into the car and bring over ourselves.

After that, let the decorating begin!