  Contact me at theyoungfamily (at) earthlink (dot) net |
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08 October 2009
New Lamps for Old
 Well, there's the last of the "big changes" I had on the Master To-Do List.The installers turned out to be a married couple; she put the pendant lamp together while he was the one that got up on the ladder and did the actual installation. While she was on the stairs putting the light together, she saw James' "rocket garden" and they talked about having taken their grandchildren to the Kennedy Spaceflight Center and having seen the Rocket Garden and taken the tour. "Endeavour" was on the pad when they went, but they did not see the actual launch. She even cleaned up the floor afterwards, although I planned to re-sweep it and wash it before putting everything back. Yeah, yeah, I'll cut to the chase. UGLY AND DUSTY OLD LAMP IS GONE! "Ding-dong, the light is dead! Which old light? The ugly light!"  REPLACED BY BEAUTIFUL NEW LIGHT (the light is on here, and this was taken with the flash):  The flash version without the light being lit shows the colors off a little better, although the professional shot in the previous post probably does the best job.  Now that it's there, it looks like it's always been there, like it belonged there all along. If you look above the purple petals, and below the purple petals, you can see the light amber and light orange, respectively, tints that I added to the glass. It's very subtle, which is what I wanted. Labels: decorating, house  04 October 2009
There's Always One More Trip
After we got home from grocery shopping this morning, James decided to install the programmable thermostat we bought yesterday (a Hunter, just in case you were curious). According to the directions, it was simple: take the old one off, label the wires, take the mount for the old one off and install the new one, match the wall wires to the wires on the new unit and fasten them, then put the new one on the wall.And the screw holes on each mount actually matched, so no messy drilling had to be done. Except for one thing: our present thermostat is powered by the house current, with battery as backup. But nowhere on the box of the programmable unit we purchased did it mention that the entire unit is powered by the battery. Neither of us want to play that way. We like the concept of double and triple redundancy. So it was back out to Lowes. Turned out that Hunter did not have—or perhaps Lowes doesn't carry—a type of thermostat that was electrically powered with a battery backup. We ended up with a Honeywell. And after that, it was simple. By the time I got done folding the towels and my own clothes, James had it up. It took me longer to program it because it's a 7-day timer and you have to do one day at the time (well, okay, I found out later you can actually do multiple days at one time; that's what I get for reading the manual after I program the timer!). I'm so short I had to stand on a stool to look the thing "in the eye" to program it. I felt like Phronsie Pepper helping Polly with the dishes in the Little Brown House! |
