The Great Room Resolution
We've started making New Year's resolutions early this year, because no one seems to stick to their resolutions anyway, so why not make them a little more realistic. My wife and I were sitting with her Mom in the "great room" (no really, that's what it's called on the deed!) staring up at all the holes in the ancient plaster, and we resolved that this winter would be the winter that we rennovate the great room.
The first step is to finish the wiring. I need to split the great room onto it's own breaker, because it shares a breaker with the kitchen, so if you were to plug a space heater in there (which we don't do any more, but I am not comfortable not having the option), and someone is using the Microwave, and the fridge compressor cuts on, you lose all power. This is, honestly, about the only thing that causes charmander.fwaggle.org to ever lose uptime.
We also need to run the ceiling wiring for the second fan. The room is quite long (it's probably pushing 30 feet?) so we decided that one light fixture wouldn't be enough, so we're going to have two ceiling fans with modest lights, and then four sconces on the walls. That's the first priority, because it's a whole lot easier to do wiring when you can smash holes in the plaster willy nilly because it's going to be replaced.
After that, I need to tear out the arch way to the original shape. That won't be much work, and actually sounds like a whole lot of fun provided I can sucker one of the kids into doing the cleaning up when I'm done.
Next up will be doing sheetrock, which is going to be expensive, time consuming, and tiring. Lifting sheets of sheetrock up to "ten foot" (quoted because at that time they were never exactly ten feet) ceilings sounds like hard work, this will likely be where my motivation will be tested.
Then comes taping, mudding, and painting. We still haven't decided on the color, but I'm sure that will prove to be fun. I enjoy arguing. No really.
After that, it's time to move onto lighting. We want two ceiling fans, because in the summer it's quite a warm room, and in the winter the fans will help circulate the warmth from the stove. However, we want the room to be a "period" room, so we're looking for some fans that will match some sconces, and that all look that "old style", sort of like the stuff that maxim lighting makes.
My eventual goal is to get a projector, and then hide all the home theater equipment in an old tube radio cabinet, so that when the system is off it is barely noticeable and everything looks like it's from about 50 or more years ago. I think it's gonna look great.
For pictures of the current progress, look at the photos tagged Great Room on my flickr.
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