Great Thrift Store Find plus Computer Update

I was checking thrift stores for a coffee table or something that I could use as a sturdier stand for my 3D printer. While I was browsing, I came across a 24-inch Dell monitor for just $24!!! Whoever donated it actually put it back in the original packaging, complete with user manuals and the original packing list.

I snagged it and set it up in the upstairs office/guest room. Here's a comparison shot with the old 19-inch monitor (which later got moved to storage):

It's pretty huge.

Since I was up there anyway, I got the new scooter computer ($180 fan-less mini-desktop with a Broadwell i3 CPU from Aliexpress) configured to work with our all-in-one printer (also located in the office) as the default scanner destination, and installed a full copy of Office 365 (free while I work with my current employer). Next steps are to migrate the media server and the home automation software from my giant workstation in the basement to this little guy.

The power savings from replacing the old office mini-desktop with this new one, and moving the always-on server duties from the big workstation to this little guy should save us around $200/year. At our electrical rate of $0.113/kWh, every continuous watt of power use costs almost exactly $1/year (technically $0.9898/year) and the power difference between the two old computers and the new one is right around 200 watts, according to my kill-a-watt.

I really need to wrap this up and make the switch.

Rearranging Rooms

With our renter gone, and Lincoln getting more mobile and sleeping through the night, we decided to play "musical beds" in the house again. By the end of the weekend, we had two useable guest rooms complete with beds!

Our queen-sized bed left the Office and went back to the basement bedroom (currently accompanied by a pack-and-play):

Our full-sized bed left the Nursery and replaced the queen-sized bed in the office:

Which leaves us with a lot more floor space in the nursery!

Lincoln has been attempting to climb out of his crib recently (and has been getting better at climbing in general), so we're probably going to convert the crib to its toddler bed mode (remove one wall of bars) soon, and baby-proof the nursery's interior door knob - which is going to require changing the existing handle-style latch to a knob-style:

Updating the Office

As part of getting the basement bedroom ready to be rented out, I'm finally touching up the paint on the upstairs office/guest bedroom (it's only been 10 months since I painted in here). Or at least I'm trying to.

Gah. I hate it when I do a stupid.

We're also moving furniture around. There is now a bed in this room, so it can actually function as a "Guest Bedroom".

Babyproof Outlets in Nursery and Office

While Link was down for a nap in the basement, I turned off the circuit breaker to the nursery and office. I replaced the outlets with tamper-proof outlets, and also replaced a smoke-stained switch in the office with a shiny new one.

Storing Furniture

Brianna's Aunt is moving between states later this year, and we are storing some of her boxes and furniture. Two chests of drawers and a chaise lounge arrived at our house this afternoon.

(I'm not sure Brianna will be willing to return the chaise lounge. She's wanted one for a long time.)

Closet Door Pulls

Finally got around to replacing these in the nursery and guest bedroom.

Collateral Touch Up

One of the walls in the guest bedroom is the same color as a wall in the great room. Since I already had the paint in a tray, I touched up the wall in the guest bedroom when I finished the grey wall in the great room.

This is a room that could definitely benefit from a half-hour of my undivided attention. But after today it still has three walls to touch up, so I will mostly try to avoid it.

Curtains

My mother-in-law Lily and her sister came up and gave us the gift of hemming our various curtains for us!

Thank you so much, ladies!

Ceiling Light in Guest Bedroom

It's only been about a month since I got the light switch working in the guest bedroom, so I'm probably jumping the gun a bit (especially since the great room still needs to be painted), but getting a ceiling light installed in that room has been on my mind for a while.

So I installed one.

I had to go up into the attic again, but it was (mostly) easier than last time. I forgot the anchor screws for the ceiling electrical box, and had to come back down from the attic to get them.

I'm quite pleased with how the ceiling light looks, and it works great!

Now I just need to find someone else to touch up the paint - at this point I don't think I'm ever going to get around to it.

Update:

Well, it's still a little shadowy in corners of the ceiling, but the ceiling light gives a lot more light than that floor lamp did.

Stain-hiding Rug

We actually bought this earlier in the week, but I forgot to post about it. Don't worry - I got this one from IKEA as-is. Way better than paying full price.

And here's the room after I moved a bunch of stuff out of the nursery this afternoon. I kinda got ahead of myself though: still have to touch up the paint in here. At least the trim is finally painted.

Guest Room Trim Painted

Brianna and I talked about where the light fixtures should go in the nursery this afternoon. She's wrong, by the way. They should totally go where I think they should go. We're still discussing that one.

(I'm sooooo losing this argument now that I've posted this).

Later, I finished taping off the trim in the guest bedroom, and put a coat of paint on the trim.

(yay, low-light photos!)

A lot of it was in bad enough shape that I'm going to have to put on a second coat later this week.

And then the edges between colors need to be touched up. Bleh. I'm sick of taping.

Guest Bedroom Electrical

Since I already had the circuit breaker for the upstairs bedrooms turned off (they're both on the same circuit), I decided to do some electrical work in the guest bedroom, too.

The light switch in the guest bedroom hasn't worked since the first time we toured the house. Flip it on and off, on and off, nothing changes. I even tested every single outlet with the switch in both positions, and the switch had no effect.

Today I pulled the switch out of the wall to make sure it was wired up. It was. Next thing to do was check the outlets - every other room in the house has a switched outlet, this one should too. And as long as I was pulling out outlets, I might as well replace them with ones that looked decent. This wasn't even the worst one, just the first I thought to take a picture of (you'd think I would have that figured out by now):

Oh, yeah: Brianna reminds me that all these outlets have been scrubbed multiple times by this point.

Anyway, it turns out the switched outlet was the second outlet I tried. Someone had replaced the outlet and apparently not known you needed to break the tab between receptacles for a switched outlet (I didn't know that til I read up on switched outlets after we bought the house).

I installed a new outlet, broke the tab, and et voila:

The switch magically turns on the light! (and cleans up the painter's plastic and vacuums the floor - I need more switches like that).

Painting Plan

Thursday evening I finished painting the door to the Guest Bedroom, put a second coat of paint on the window sills in the Great Room, and was twenty-five percent done taping off the trim in the Guest Bedroom so I could paint it before re-hanging the door when I decided I was done for the night.

So, I took the rest of the night off.

I did manage to twist Brianna's arm so she actually settled on some colors for the room before the evening was over.

As you can see, there are going to be a lot of transitions. Hmm. Thanks honey.



This morning has been dedicated to getting Brianna packed up for her camping trip with her family.

At this point, it's Eleven AM here, and there is still a ton of work to do before I can start priming. Fortunately, at this point in my new life as a homeowner, I've learned to accept being behind (my own, ridiculous) schedule. Anyway, the upshot is, I'll consider today a success if I can finish the prep work and get the ceiling primed.

Tally-ho!

Reorganizing

I moved "stuff" around this evening, trying to prepare to hit a couple of birds with one stone: I need to empty out the Great Room before I can paint it; the guest bedroom needs its trim painted and all five colors touched up; and it's time to start painting doors again.

Checklist Update

I have a grand plan to start painting the Great Room this Fourth of July weekend. Last time I announced my schedule plans here, it didn't work out so well, but let's hope this time is different.

As part of prepping for painting, I rethought the checklists I used upstairs, and updated them:

 

All three rooms pretty much done with painting. The biggest hurdle remaining is lighting. I picked up an IKEA Sol lamp for $10 a while ago for the nursery. I'm going to have to go up into the attic again and do some wiring in order to install it properly. Not really looking forward to that task :-/

Painting Trim

Brianna painted the trim in the first guest bedroom over the weekend. It looks pretty fantastic all fresh and newly painted. We still have to touch up the ceiling color, but this room is getting awfully close to being done.

As usual, we have some IKEA stuff in here: we hung the curtain wire over the weekend, and put what was supposed to be a shower curtain on it. I had picked up the shower curtain at IKEA for a couple bucks, thinking Brianna might like it for a window curtain. Brianna claims the colors on the curtain go really well with the paint in this room, and I guess I'll have to believe her.

I also found a full-sized bed frame at IKEA last week, for $30. It had one little scratch on a side rail: we'll push that side against the wall. I still have to assemble the drawers, and we haven't purchased a center rail, slats or a mattress for this bed yet, so it's going to sit unfinished for a little while.

Of course, part of getting this room into the finishing stages was taking the debris out. For now, some of it simply shifted one room over:

Second Guest Bedroom is First to be Used

Brianna's sisters are coming up for the weekend, and we needed a place to put them. Since I still had the first guest bedroom set up as a painting station, we prepped the second guest bedroom for use.

I didn't get around to painting the trim or door yet, but I did pull down the tape, put up new wall plates on the outlets and light switch, vacuum, and move lights into the room. Brianna helped (and directed) me to hang curtains, as well.

I'm not good at taking photospheres yet, and I'll have to re-take this one but this one is a little better, and it gets the idea across:

Aaaand here's what it looked like before:

Painting (Mostly) Done in Second Guest Bedroom

Et voilà:

It's not terribly obvious in this photo, but the freshly-painted closet doors look a lot better than the entry-door does in person.

Two Walls Done on Second Guest Bedroom

Well, I got two coats done on two of the walls in the second guest bedroom. The color correction on this panorama isn't great.

The wall on the left is the second-darkest wall in the room, and the wall on the right will be the lightest. I also finished up the closet doors for this room today, but as I haven't even started putting color on the closet, the doors are still in the paint room.

More Painting

I started painting almost as soon as I got home from work today. Put on the second coat of primer in the closet of the second guest bedroom, and put the second coat of colored paint on the ceiling. I pulled off the tape later in the evening, just before taking this picture.

I also put the second coat of primer in the upstairs guest bathroom.

Painting the bathroom has been a little haphazard, but it's moving along:

And then, since I still had primer in my tray, I started in on the doors and shelves:

Before: Ugly

Much better

So. The two closet doors for the first guest bedroom have one complete coat of primer. I'll check out how it looks tomorrow, but I think I am just going to move on to color paint rather than do a second coat of primer.

I don't know why everyone was telling me how bad painting doors was. I thought the bathroom and closet were both way more of a pain in the butt.