The Office - Take 2 - Day 8

This will be the monster post. Even though the bulk of the heavy labor work was already done at this point, lots of the details remain to be completed, and the devil is in the details.

There is nothing more nerve wracking during a remodel than installing something on your newly finished walls. At this point, you understand what kind of work goes into any little repair, so any ding, scratch, mar, or hole seems like a gigantic problem. So, you try to prevent that. But, at the same point in time, you realize that you need curtains and curtains need a rod.

We already had this awesome two-fer curtain rod holder from The Office remodel 1. So, it was only a matter of measuring new holes (I wanted them to be a little higher this time because last time the sheers dragged on the ground a little) so I measured, used the level, and installed the first one.


Once the first one was installed, it wasn't that difficult to get the others in place as well. That first one just made me a little nervous. But, I conquered that fear. :)


Installed holders sans rods.


This is the first rod with the sheers. I wanted you to see the whole scenario. I don't know why. I think it is a cool design. At any rate, here are the sheers on the rod without being spread over the rod.


And here they are with even distribution. Immediately the light in the room became soft and warm. The harshness of the direct sunlight was cut down and diffused through the crinkly, cream-colored sheers. So nice.


The second rod installed contained the curtains. You can see at the very bottom that these curtains shrunk in the wash, but I don't really mind because the sheers are longer and more consistent. Plus, I love the brown buttons on the top of the curtains that match the oil-rubbed-bronze hardware. I think this look is really nice. Plus, the curtains are long enough to block the entire window, so when this is used as a spare bedroom, it will cut down the light for extra sleeping in.


The next stage, and often my favorite stage, of the remodel is redecorating. I had to get low on this one to be sure that you could see the image of Jim Lovell. This was a gift to SPF when he went into the Air Force Academy and one of the links between us. We both wanted to be astronauts. So much so that we both went to Purdue to pursue that goal way beyond our cute, initial "what do you want to be when you grow up" phase in life. Purdue has graduated the highest number of astronauts of any other university in the country as well as consistently graduating the highest percentage of female engineers. So, win win. Needless to say, neither one of us are currently employed with NASA, but SPF did get his physics degree. I am still hoping to be the first professional photographer/professor in space.

At any rate, since we both wanted to be astronauts and this is still a room of work/play/dreaming, I thought it was appropriate to hang the picture back up in here, on that wall where it lived for many years. It was serendipitous that the inner portion of the window matt matched already.


The room with everything in its place. Still with bear walls, but I will post any updates on that when I figure out what goes where.


A different perspective.


So, the next big project is going to be finishing the hallway and second closet in this room. At the moment, everything is sort of shoved back there so that the spare bedroom would be "done" for the purposes of pictures. However, this room has to be back in order by the time my in-laws come for a visit in a few weeks.


I also have a stash of various art wall hanging items in the hallway that needs to find new homes on the walls around here. I will have to deal with them as well because they block the walkway pretty severely.


But, at least the cats like the new arrangement.



When SPF got home on Day 8, I gave him two new professional grade outlets to install. One of the two that needed to be replaced had gotten loose (as in the plugs simply fall out when you push them in) and the other was nasty and one of the outlets had stopped working altogether. This one was the loose one. We turned off the power, checked it twice, and then he ripped this one out and had it back in the wall in no time.


Once the oil-rubbed bronze outlet cover was installed, this one was ready to go.


This one, on the other hand, was the one that had one dead outlet and was, as you can see, nasty and old. He suggested that I try my hand at electrical repair. Again, we killed the power, which also killed the only light in this room. I know you can't tell it from this shot (because my flash is so amazing) but it was dark in here and we were working with a flashlight at this point.


But, I got it loose and took it out.


Only to find five wires that we weren't expecting. SPF's outlet had three wires. Mine had eight. Nice.


So we stopped and thought. We evaluated where each wire was coming from and going to, what each purpose was, and what we would have to ensure to get them back in the correct orientation function without blowing a circuit or starting a fire.

Thankfully, we had a class on electricity and magnetism at Purdue with Professor Durbin with lots of circuitry mapping and schematic reading, and so we figured out that the outlet was a pass through in series with the subsequent outlet on the wall, which happened to be a switched outlet, hence the addition of several more wires.

So, I broke the gang link of the right hand side of the new outlet and started to curl the wires to screw them into the appropriate places.


Each wire had to have a little hook curled at the end to ensure that it would hold the screw and stay tightly attached to the outlet. So, I curled all eight of them.


Then I screwed them all in place and shoved the whole assembly back in the wall, screwing it into place as well.


Another oil-rubbed-bronze outlet, and voila!


So pretty. We are so close to being done on this room.