The Home Ownership Thread

[otc]

I'm all for white too. I suppose I do have a light blue kitchen right now, but I would never consider anything besides a shade of white for the rest of the walls.

Does anyone actually like fan-lights? they seem to be de rigueur in rentals (I at least have some ugly ceiling fixtures instead of the fans), the fans themselves seem to be useless and noisy, and the lights are usually ugly.

 

[dah328]



I'm all for white too. I suppose I do have a light blue kitchen right now, but I would never consider anything besides a shade of white for the rest of the walls.

Does anyone actually like fan-lights? they seem to be de rigueur in rentals (I at least have some ugly ceiling fixtures instead of the fans), the fans themselves seem to be useless and noisy, and the lights are usually ugly.

Well, the posted examples are the worst kind. There are fans with much lower-profile light kits. I'm not saying they look better than the same fan with no light at all, but there's a certain practicality that ceiling-mounted lights have over lamps. I have some fan-lights similar to the posted ones that I am looking to replace with something along the following lines:

 

[otc]

I just feel like...if I had the fan lights, I would rip them out and replace them with regular lights.

Unless I had super high ceilings or something and needed the air circulation (in which case I would probably want something more akin to the bigassfans stuff).

 

[SkinnyGoomba]

If I had fan lights, I would go all 'do hit' on them.

 

[upthewazzu]

I'm all for white too. I suppose I do have a light blue kitchen right now, but I would never consider anything besides a shade of white for the rest of the walls.

Does anyone actually like fan-lights? they seem to be de rigueur in rentals (I at least have some ugly ceiling fixtures instead of the fans), the fans themselves seem to be useless and noisy, and the lights are usually ugly.

Really...only white?

I left the walls in my house white for about a year after we moved in and it drove me nuts. Totally had an apartment feel to it. Started out by painting the downstairs a nice shade of brown and then added a little color to the upstairs rooms. All the colors are very Earthy, not showy or bright at all and really add to the house.

 

[RedLantern]

I tackled my first plumbing repair/installation today!

Our pre-sale inspection showed that the pressure at our house was too high so I knew we'd be needing a pressure regulator installed. We just got new appliances, so it's time to get that done so the pressure doesn't damage the appliances.

I installed it right above the main shutoff inside the house so that's good.

Steps:
1.) turn off and drain water
2.) hack saw a 1 inch section out of the run of galvanized to be replaced
3.) use pipe wrench and channel lock pliers to unscrew old pipe
4.) telfon tape the two ends of each of the new sections of galvanized to be installed
5.) install the two new pipes, leaving approximately 5" gap between the two ends
6.) install brass union ends on the end of each galvanized pipe
7.) slide pressure regular into the gap with the included gasket on each side
8.) tighten both union nuts
9.) turn water back on

 

[Gus]

I don't think you need to go quite as far as lefty says but I would suggest at a minimum:

YES- ripping out the fanlights (and the brown fan, only use white simple fans)
No- Ripping out the crown moulding and cleaning it up.
No- Ripping out the baseboards and putting in a larger square baseboard.
No- Ripping out the carpet and replace with a darker more interesting carpet. (replace with hardwood or leave alone)
YES- Replace the kitchen ceiling light with recessed lighting.
YES- Replace the stair railing with glass. (Excellent suggestion)
Yes- Repaint everything white.

 

[E TF]

Congrats!

Were you holding your breath when you turned the water back on? I'm always expecting everything to burst apart in a huge watery mess when I do those kind of jobs. Its only actually happened once.

 

[lefty]

Really...only white?

I left the walls in my house white for about a year after we moved in and it drove me nuts. Totally had an apartment feel to it. Started out by painting the downstairs a nice shade of brown and then added a little color to the upstairs rooms. All the colors are very Earthy, not showy or bright at all and really add to the house.

There's white and then there's white. This place would benefit from the latter.

Currently the walls are painted a shitflesh colour. It's a small home without a lot of interesting architectural detail. Painting it white (after removing the offending lights, etc.) would essentially create a small perfect jewellry box that would better show off the furniture and/or lifestyle of the owner. Colour is great - I recently painted my foyer dark brown/grey with near-black baseboards - but you need to have a sense of why you want colour.

Just noticed the DR light - probably toss that too.

The poster hasn't responded yet, so I'm going to shut up until he says, "thanks, guys" or "**** you, assholes.'

lefty

 

[E TF]

Obviously it's not a big deal if you prefer ugly, non-dimmable, slow-to-light white spiral tubes over real light bulbs.


But this January, when the last real light bulbs are banned, just think of all that electricity that's being saved from conversion into worthless heat!

If CFL's had come first, you'd be whining the same.

I once spent a long weekend in a house that still had victorian gas lighting (no electricity at all in fact), and I was surprised at how white and "intense" the light was: fair bit whiter than incandescents. I imagine when the switch to electric light came along there was no end of complaining about how yellow everything was.

 

[Ataturk]



I was just going to suggest those. They're my favourite of the legal bulbs. I use these and LEDs in places where the colour is less important (hallways, the cellar, the garage etc). Here in the UK you can still get hold of "rough service" incandescents if you look in the right places.

Some LEDs look almost like real bulbs -

But i find most houses are really overlit anyway. A lot of people/house builders seem to think you have to be able to perform surgery in any given room. Take the room posted by rohde88 above - 10 bulbs in the ceiling in an ordinary sized room - and that's before you've put any lamps etc in (i'd redo that rohde88!). Vast majority of bulbs in my house are 25 or 40W (or equivalents), a handful of 60W, no 100Ws at all.

Rough service bulbs are, I believe, much dimmer than standard ones for any given wattage. And that LED doesn't look like a real bulb. It's probably made of plastic, and of course, there's a big white thing taking up the bottom half of the bulb. It'd stand out like a sore thumb in any fixture that displays the bulb.

And although I agree about the brightness in most rooms most of the time, that's what dimmers are for.

 

[Gus]

So true about shades of white.

Ralph Lauren paint has a shade called "Studio" that opens up any room, is bright and clean but not as intense as your mamas washing machine. (AKA appliance white). The small rooms of this place would benefit from this shade of white.

 

[E TF]

I don't think you need to go quite as far as lefty says but I would suggest at a minimum:

YES- ripping out the fanlights (and the brown fan, only use white simple fans)
No- Ripping out the crown moulding and cleaning it up.
No- Ripping out the baseboards and putting in a larger square baseboard.
No- Ripping out the carpet and replace with a darker more interesting carpet. (replace with hardwood or leave alone)
YES- Replace the kitchen ceiling light with recessed lighting.
YES- Replace the stair railing with glass. (Excellent suggestion)
Yes- Repaint everything white.

Replacing the stair rail with glass would be a very sleek modern look, which would be great, but only if you got rid of the other olde-worlde features as well, such as the cornice (presume that's what a crown moulding is) and the georgian style 6 panel doors. Otherwise it seems to me you'd just have a random mix of modern and repro old.

 

[E TF]



Rough service bulbs are, I believe, much dimmer than standard ones for any given wattage. And that LED doesn't look like a real bulb. It's probably made of plastic, and of course, there's a big white thing taking up the bottom half of the bulb. It'd stand out like a sore thumb in any fixture that displays the bulb.

And although I agree about the brightness in most rooms most of the time, that's what dimmers are for.

True about rough service bulbs being dimmer, I was just noting them as an option. I have a couple with really old fashioned twisty elements that look pretty cool. If the bulb is on show you don't want anything too bright in there anyway.
I did say "almost" about the LED. The glass bit is glass, not plastic, though the white bit is plastic of course. I have some of a similar model in pendant fittings with reeded glass globes over them. Unless you're really looking closely, they pass unnoticed.

 

[RedLantern]



Congrats!

Were you holding your breath when you turned the water back on? I'm always expecting everything to burst apart in a huge watery mess when I do those kind of jobs. Its only actually happened once.

Not really expecting it to burst apart, but I'm periodically checking to see if there's seepage etc.

Next up - connecting all the plumbing and drains for the kitchen I'm putting in downstairs, then probably a new water heater.