Archives for January 2010

Well … it looks like our stalled renovations might finally be starting up again. I kind of hope it is, but it’s off to a very slow start.

It all started last night. You see, about a week ago we bit the bullet and bought a new TV since our almost 6 year old DLP TV seems to be dying. Naturally, the TV that we’ve already paid for isn’t in stock at the store. It was supposed to be in last Monday, then this past Friday and now they are saying it won’t be in until Wednesday. Sigh …

Anyway … yesterday we decided to go to the store again and look at home theater systems because the one that we bought with our DLP TV has also stopped working (the Receiver blew). We figured we might be able to work a deal at the store since the TV we ordered isn’t in and we were right- we got about $150 off the system.

So … last night, we get home with our new Home theater system. Too tired to start fiddling with it and hooking it up to our current TV, DVD, PRV and other accessories. However, my husband did ask me if perhaps I wanted to rearrange the living room and put the TV in a different area of the room. He remembered that I’d wanted to rearrange things once our renovations were done.

Earlier today we started figuring out where our current TV (soon to be replaced with new Plasma) will go in the new room arrangement as well as where our big couch, love seat, easy chair and the dogs crate will be moved.

The wall we want to put the TV on has two electrical outlets, but they aren’t hooked up. We had moved them around a few years ago when we were doing renovations ie fixing drafts where the baseboards had been, taking out walls in the living room dining room area, venetian plastering the walls, opening up part of the ceiling to fix up drafty areas and so on … When our renovations stalled we never did get around to reattaching the electrical outlets or putting the new baseboards and quarter round on in the living room dining room area. It was just hidden behind the couch.

Now what we need to do is re-hook up the electrical outlets and attach them to the wall above the area where the baseboard will go. Then put the baseboard and quarter round on the wall where the TV will be.

It’s really not that big of a job, but my husband was tinkering around for a few hours figuring out the electrical work and now he’s out buying two new electrical outlet boxes and some items to help attach the baseboards to the wall.

Some of the baseboards are already cut to the correct sizes … you see we were almost done finishing up our living room dining room area when my husband and I both fell sick at approximately the same time (back in 2004/2005) and that halted our reno in it’s tracks.

Hopefully, when my husband gets home we’ll get to work with the electrical outlets, the baseboard and rearranging the room. Oh and of course setting up the new home theater system. Thankfully my husband has the day off work tomorrow so if we don’t finish up we’ll have tomorrow to work on things as well.

It’s a start! If we complete this job at least one part of our living room dining room will look better and then hopefully we’ll move on to attaching the baseboard and quarter round in the rest of the area, as well as finally getting the tin ceiling up! Yeah … then after oh … maybe 7 years my living room dining room reno will finally be done!

It figures we’re starting up renovations just when we get a brand new TV … we’re going to have to either finish things before the TV finally arrives, or make sure it’s covered up when we’re working. I’m sure there’s going to be plaster dust and maybe even saw dust floating around. Hmm that reminds me, I’d better stock up on allergy relief meds as well!

Funny how rearranging the set up our our living room might have finally got us started on our renovations again … a small project turns into a bigger one in the matter of an hour or so. At least we have just about everything we need to complete the renovations in the living room dining room. Hmm … maybe our basement will finally start to clear out a bit once all the reno material (wood, baseboards, tin ceiling tiles etc) starts being used and we’ll have a basement we can use for something more than laundry and storage. Believe me, the basement if full of stuff and looks awful.

Maybe I’ll take some before and after pictures and post them as we work on our renovations. I’m so happy that it looks like we’re finally getting out of our renovation rut, I’ve been embarrassed by the unfinished look of our main floor (especially after working so hard on our renovations the first few years we were in the house).