Bumblebriar

I’m so proud of my daughter @omglivia !  she’s a Junior at Brigham Young University and has been working in the Harold B Lee Library Media Department in addition to being involved in BYUSA and not to mention her studies.  She’s always been so creative, so I’m not surprised at what she produces at BYU.

Her last Video production is here, check it out!!  

The whole crew has done an awesome job, on all the library promotion video’s.  This is probably the most creative one yet, all original music, they even have a ringtone and you can download the mp3 – incredible work on this.  It stars one of her roommates Julia.

I love all of them that she worked on, it’s like a fun easter egg hunt when they come out.  I scan them looking for a glimpse of her in each of the scenes. One of my favorites is the Special Collections, Theatrical Preview, she’s the security guard near the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIUiH3PNOAE

Be sure to check out one of the best ones they did.  New Spice:  Study like a Scholar, Scholar, it went viral earlier this year and has about 2.8M hits on Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ArIj236UHs&feature=related

Then take a look at the Zombie Car Sharing video they did with Hertz

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1HVIlXqvwM&feature=related

I mentioned before, we had tons of yardwork done.  We did as much as we possibly could ourselves, but we are smart enough to recognize what we cannot do and didn’t hesitate to get a specialist.  

We had a very dead cedar tree along a stand of trees.  It’s looked like and old dead dry christmas tree, you could almost feel the fire hazard when you walked near it.  

Chainsaws are not my husbands thing, and I don’t blame him.  Do it wrong and you lose an arm or a leg, crush the neighbors fence and the dog, etc.  It’s just not worth the risk.  We had plenty of tree cutting cowboys show up and offer to do it cheap, but it’s worth doing some research and getting a reputable guy.  

We chose Eduardo’s tree service, they are reputable, and beyond their chainsaw capabilities, they really are arborists.  We checked out their credentials with the State to confirm they were licensed and bonded via the states website  it’s worth an indepth read.  Check that your guy hasn’t opened and closed multiple businesses, hoping to leave their problems behind them.  Know that their insurance is up to date, etc. 

And it’s fun to watch.  They were fast, climbed that tree like a squirrel, cut all the branches off and just sawed it off into short logs

We had them cut into 16 in logs for us to split and they hauled everything else away.  Firewood for the winter!!!

After several weeks of rehab from a surgery ( a whole nuther story altogether for another day or another blog post – maybe), we are delving into more house projects.  The summer project we are taking on is “Paint”.  The house is in tremendous need of a good coat of new paint, maybe two coats.  It’s been a large white house for many many years.  White unfortunately collects dust and shows the years of grime and mold.  It also reveals the bad paint jobs underneath unfortunately.

We (I use the term loosely, I’m just bossing my husband around and assisting on select occasions – but I still consider it “hands-on”!) started with some big yard clean up, removing all the plants around the foundation.  It has a collection of old azalea, rhodies and camelia bushes that have grown to trunks near 10 inches around.  Some are probably near 70 years old we calculate.  

this allowed us to get up to the house to scrape, clean, and perform all the prep work, including cleaning out gutters and removing shutters.  You can see it took us a while to get to the paint part given the new growth of the bushes we left.  But summer was slow in getting here to Oregon.

We removed about 6 truck loads full of just yard debris.  It’s exciting progression on this long term project!

Next blog post – Paint!

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I love machine embroidery.  I love it because I am terrible with hand embroidery, I don’t have the patience to see it out for the long haul, and it hurts my hands.  Who doesn’t love instant gratification?  Machine embroidery delivers that.  But a machine by itself is worthless, you need great embroidery designs.  There are really only a few good sites, with quality designs at reasonable prices.

This week I am talking up Embroidables Embroidery Design Gallery.  I wouldn’t recommend something I haven’t already used before myself.  I have purchased many design sets at this site and stitched them out.  And they stitch out beautifully.  I love the selection of artists they use and the  prices have always been reasonable.

I recently stitched out this beautiful circle frame from the Frames set and love how it turned out.  I stitched it on twill for a heavier base for a future pillow.  I’ll be ironing on an old family photo into the center.   If you stitch something out from Embroidables, please come back and share!

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We had a couple walls that had some water damage.  The water damage created a unique situation where as the walls are concrete/plaster mix and lathe, covered with a brown coat then a smooth plaster(lime) coat then paint (I did a lot of reading on sites like this historic home preservation, which by the way was an overall great source to learn about the home I am in –  a great read and source of info).   The water, from an upstairs bathroom, mostly drained down between the walls all the way to the basement, but a good amount – or enough, soaked to the surface and separated the brown coat from the very thin plaster coat and it came off in sheets.  Fortunately the source of the leak was corrected, but the damage remained and the homeowners didn’t know what to do, so they left it.

As we were painting and cleaning, it seemed to be unnoticed for a while until we started cleaning the walls and the plaster sheets just came off.  To clean it up you have to keep peeling it away until it stops, and for a horrific amount of time and distance, it didn’t appear to stop.  We got the surface cleaned up, and had to clean off the brown coat down to the plaster/concrete walls, to prep the walls for a smooth finish again.   After a lot of scraping, cleaning, vacuuming and sweeping it up, we had a clean surface to work with.  then in reverse, we smoothed on the plaster (goes on pink – dries white, when it’s ready to sand).  We sanded, swept, vacuumed and repeated, about 2 times to be sure all the areas had a good coating, sanded smooth and sealed.

Then we painted about 2 coats of good quality primer sealer, drying between each.  Only then could we apply the finish paint.  Taking the time for all the steps before, painting was the easiest part.  And we call it success!  I can tell where my work and the craftsmen of old work meet, but I don’t have to point it out to anyone.  I am happy with it and know that it won’t be flaking off anytime soon.

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Several weeks ago I mentioned my new chandelier.  Sadly it’s been languishing near the door in the box, no time on my hands to put it together, also a little afraid.  I had never assembled a chandelier, I’m not that handy at electricity – I do make it a habit to avoid it when possible.

We started out by making sure to read all the reviews, there are many and they are very helpful.  I recommend checking out the reviews before you purchase any item, they are great tools for every buyer to be aware!  But they additionally provide valuable helps and guides for the post purchase assembly.  In other words I was aware of what I was getting into and I planned ahead.

We unpacked it!  and laid everything out on the table to assess how difficult this was going to be.  We pulled out the instruction sheet to do an inventory.   First off be aware that this is manufactured in a foreign land, one where English is an obscure language for sure.  The instructions were assembled very poorly, difficult to understand and Oh!  Surprise!  they were backwards, but I knew to expect this given the reviews I perused!

The pieces were all there, and there are a lot.  You will find lots of tiny crystals – not well packed, in fact it’s like a big bag of little glass jewels.  There was some chipping and some cracking, but nothing unusable.  Fortunately they send a few extra’s and I had plenty to work with plus a few spares left over.  So we plotted out our path and laid it all out.

First we had to attached all the crystals and as noted in the reviews, they are silver jewelry wires used, I tried to spray paint them in advance, I think that was a mess, so 50% of them have 50% of the brown paint on them, but it was barely noticeable – I think this is a smaller issue than others I encountered.

We also prepped for the anticipated “orange” plastic candle covers, and yes, they were “orange”.  We painted them white with some krylon plastic paint – which worked great, and we (I) started to assemble.  My biggest issue was how to prop and balance all the pieces while I was assembling so they didn’t bend or break.  For this I re-used the box and the brace that was inside for shipping.

First, all the crystals are attached as I noted above.  The tips of the chandelier are flanged and have a hole in them, you insert the crystal and thread the wire through and bend around.  Fortunately I already have a few lighting fixtures around to see what the technique is for threading and securing the crystals, this was time consuming but really the easiest part.    Once you have all the crystals on, you attach the wired arms and decorative arms to the base.

Again, I’ll say the biggest issue was balancing and propping up the thing, mid assembly and post assembly.   We had to go back and tighten, adjust and retighten the arms to make sure it was all balanced.  The electrical stage made us stall a week to make sure we did it right, but it ended up going pretty smoothly, especially since we were replacing an existing chandelier.  You simply gather and wrap the white wires around one end of the electrical supply line, and gather and wrap the black wires to the other.  The supply wire is already threaded through the pole and you don’t need to worry about which is which.  Luckily the ceiling receptacle was ready for the fixture, the new one weighing comparable to the older one, if not lighter.  We attached the wires (yes!  don’t forget to turn off your power at the box, and test it with a tester to be sure!!), did some wire management and then screwed the caps on.   We had to bend/adjust a couple of the candles to have them straight, but they were easy to fix and TA DA!  We are thrilled with the results!  What do you think?

The old versus New

Thanks for reading!

Related articles

• Beautiful Chandelier (bumblebriar.com)

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Image via Wikipedia

We’ve been doing a lot of painting lately, trying to clean up the hallway and get it livable.  That means no cardboard and tarps on the floor, no paint buckets stacked in a corner, all the trim, ceiling and walls neatly painted.  It never fails, we get about 80% done and “Surprise!” some new project appears in front of us.   Just as I was about to finalize the room, I realize that just under the surface of the old paint seems to be bubbling in a small area.  I take a scraper to the little tiny area to clean it up and CrUmBLe! (I’m not sure to phonetically replicate the sound, but it was terrible).  The area expanded from the size of a quarter to now half the wall.    I’ll post pictures as I tackle this project this weekend, in the meantime – my beautiful chandelier must wait to be assembled and installed.

And I used Zemanta with this post, testing out the link to “paint” above and the related articles and the image – did these enhance your visit to my blog today?

Related articles

• How much prep work for painting interior walls? (ask.metafilter.com)
• How To Paint a Room (apartmenttherapy.com)

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I found the chandelier of my dreams at Potterybarn.com.  Expensive, yes!  but finally I found a very reasonable facsimile over at Overstock.com – so similar I’m sure it’s done in the same factory overseas.

A few differences: the candle sticks have an orange look, the pin assembly for the crystals is with wire pins and not screws and I noted the electrical wire is white.  But for a difference of over $180, I can work around the things I don’t like.  Having combed through the reviews I can see that others had the same issues and worked around them.  Many spray painted the candle sticks to a lighter color – I can do that.  And others either painted over or used a perm marker to color the pins.  Assembly is the same, that being tedious, but possible.  I assume as well since I have to assemble the hard wiring, I can swap the power cord out for a darker cord.   I even save 10% by being a new customer on Overstock and got free shipping.

So I hit the “purchase” button and await it’s arrival.  I’ll post again when it is received and put it together, hanging in my dining room.

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An interesting thing happened one night.  Yes, 1 night before we moved in, after we had refinished the floors, painted walls and got the house in shape enough to move in.  We showed up to find the sidewalk had been barricaded.

A letter was posted to the barricade, with the previous owners named redacted with a black marker, but clearly articulating a “trip hazard” or two had been reported and requesting contact to fix the said trip hazard or else….  Obvious no one had contacted them, infact it went ignored, passing it off to us.  It of course didn’t say what the or else was, but clearly the city would come and fix the trip hazard at a probably at something above the going rate. 

So the next morning I called and found a very helpful gentleman, who quickly came over to explain the issues.  He was very cooperative and understood we were just moving in.  He was very flexible at how the sidewalk needed to be fixed, which was basically a quick cut, pry up the bad and poor down the new, but at a smooth transition from one section to other so there was no trip hazards.    He gave me an extension of about 2 months, but asked that I keep him updated, but the barricades must remain til it was fixed. 

Well we let it got a couple weeks, but it’s a pain to have the sidewalks barricaded.  people then walk through your yard, get mad, kick at the barricades (like they thought I put them there).  We have some great friends who had experience with sawing concrete and understood what to do.  And who else was helpful?  that’s right, Home Depot, went there and rented a concrete saw, and a blade.  They showed us how to use it and how to make the job quick and easy.  We initially had been set up with some wafer type blades, but when we went out the door he realized that they weren’t the right size and he put a diamond blade on it for us at no extra charge.  We were not good at estimating resources, because we grossly missed the amount of quickcrete we needed and had to make 2 additional trips to get the right amount.  But if that’s the worst of our problems, we are pretty lucky.

It was a relatively clear day, not a downpour, but dry enough for us to pour the quickcrete and cover it with plastic so it could cure over the weekend.

I tell you, the saw cut like butter, he scored it, then cut again likety split.  The long work with prying it up.  We didn’t have a long enough pry bar to get all the leverage needed, but our friend headed to his shop and had a long metal pole that did the job.  We put our teenager to work chipping at the blocks to come up.  I figure those types of experiences are good so they have just enough pain to realize, that’s not what they want to do for the rest of their lives.  Call it motivation to stay in school and get a quality education so you don’t have to do things like that when you grow up.

A bit of bender board and as I mentioned 2 trips to Home Depot for quickcrete and sidewalk was mended.  The trip hazard eliminated.  The city was good about coming out on that Monday to pick up the barricades and you would never know there was one.    A job well done by everyone and so glad this project is behind us.

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