Holiday Home Improvements (Dining Room Light)

The irritating transitions to the kitchen

Moving the dining room light fixture

The floor inlay that caused the light to be off center

The light is now centered over the table (or close enough)

Many years ago (over 10 because it was before Derek was born) we installed Pergo laminate flooring. Color Tile was still in business because they did the job. We had 2 big Labrador Retrievers and were worried about them tearing up real hardwood floors, so we opted for the laminate instead. The laminate was also less expensive (win win). Years later we now wish we had just put in the hardwoods.

We were inexperienced homeowners at the time and we got burned. I know now that whatever it is - home improvements, your health, etc. - you need to educate yourself and cannot trust the so called expert to take over the job and do the job the way you would think an expert would do it.

Our main beef with the installation was that they failed to tell us that the kitchen which had linoleum was higher than the hallway and dining room which were previously carpeted so that after the laminate was installed there was a pretty significant transition. They ended up stacking 2 transition pieces on top of each other at the thresholds. We've damned those thresholds ever since.

We thought we would do something special and told the installers that we wanted to do some sort of an inlay in the dining room. Working with the installer we decided on a border around the dining room. The inlay being a rectangle caused us to have to run the dining room table left to right instead of front to back into the bay window. The problem was that the light fixture was centered for running the table front to back. So for over ten years we have cursed that light fixture.

You may wonder why we have never fixed it? The answer is that we really don't like our dining room and rarely use it. The furniture was given to us and it's not really our style - but you can't beat free so we try to make it work. The wall paper and window treatments are from the previous owner and we've never bothered to change them out because we don't actually like the whole idea of a separate formal dining room. What we really want is an open floor plan with a big kitchen, family room, and farmhouse table. This holiday break we spent many more countless hours discussing how we might knock out walls to open the floor plan and do away with the dining room. We just can't come up with the magical reasonable priced solution. So we just tolerate the dining room.

I think it was that initial experience of the floors along with the pets and kids messing up the carpet and scratching the furniture that just made me say screw it - you just can't keep anything nice - even when you pay the pros - so just fix what you have to fix (on your own when you can), invest your money, and fix the house when your ready to sell it.

We followed that plan for many years before deciding last year to make over the front of the house. It had just gotten so bad that money was going to have to be spent. We had a vision of what it might look like and we decided to step it up more than usual. We were generally happy with the results and feel like the look of the house better reflects our style now. It makes us feel nice to drive up to it instead of grudgingly tolerating it like we used to. With the success of last year's improvements we have a renewed interest in home improvement.

So this holiday break we decided to tackle the light. It wasn't terrible, but it took about 10 times longer than I thought it would to get it "done done done". Of course, the ceiling paint doesn't match exactly (it never does). That will just have to wait for another day. While we were patching drywall I decided to hit several other spots in the house that needed touching up as well so the project expanded beyond the dining room. Drywall patching is messy messy messy. We were all so tired of the dust everywhere. I don't know how many times I thought we were done with the drywall patching and mopped the floors and dusted only to find out that we weren't quite satisfied with the patch and had to mess everything up again.

Two Steps Forward One Step Back

The end chairs on our dining room table are different than the ones that came with the table. I had spray painted them quickly over ten years ago as a quick fix for some gathering we were having and, like the rest of the dining room, never really was motivated to figure out what we really wanted to do with them. The original coat of paint I sprayed on was not very thick and you could still see the original bare wood in many places.

So while we were working on the dining room I decided to hit the chairs again with glossy black spray paint (again the quick fix). The first chair I took out to the back yard and sprayed, but I didn't have enough time to get to the second chair until the next day. The next day was cold and blustery so I decided to spray the chair in the garage. I thought I had enough paper down. Helen came in and said, "Remember when I spray painted something in the garage and paint got everywhere?" I have a very limited and selective memory so of course I did not remember it. The paint was all over the nice garage floor we had painted last year. Miraculously, I took the time to move the cars out beforehand. Note to self: no amount of paper will cover the garage properly so don't do a big spray job in the garage.

I researched cleaning paint online and someone said to use citrus cleaner and comet. Helen and I tried it and it worked great. It was tiring work scrubbing down the whole garage, but the floor looks squeaky clean. The citrus cleaner worked so well on the paint that I was a little surprised it didn't get out some of the oil spots from the cars. It cleaned everything else.

However, I did leave the citrus cleaner bottle with citrus cleaner on it on the stained steps leading from the garage to the house so now there's a nice spot on the stained stairs where the cleaner removed the finish. It never ends.