I Must Be On Vacation

So, Monday I thought I'd just paint the kids' bathroom while Maia was at preschool all day. Of course, that's not turning out to be the little project I thought it'd be...

For one thing, I painted the room orange (which was the easy part), and I just couldn't stomach all the cheap gold fixtures in there, so I called Jim (since it's not technically my house, but his) and asked if I could replace the light fixture and toilet topper cabinet with nicer ones.

So I went to Menard's and found a simple white cabinet to put over the toilet to replace the nasty brown one, and a sleek new stainless light fixture to replace the old "dressing room" style one that was there. Of course, it's never as simple as you think it's going to be... I took the old fixture off the wall only to find that not only was there no electrical box, there's nothing but a pipe behind the wall to attach a box to, and there's a bigger hole in the drywall than the size of the new fixture base.

Jim's suggestion was to but a board over the hole and just affix the light fixture to that. So that's what I worked on today, but the problem is, there's no room to stick the wires & wire nuts once you get the fixture all attached to the wall, unless you shove them back through the hole in the board which exposes them to the water pipe and all the insulation without the protection of an electrical box. I'm no electrician, but that doesn't seem safe. So I'm back to the drawing board. Pretty much everything I did today, I had to rip out, and I'll have to try something new tomorrow. I'd really like to have this thing finished up by Monday.

OK, but that's not what I'm excited about (really? why not?). Today, I found a chair to go in my blank spot- and a lamp!

I found this combo at a used furniture store, and paid about $75 for both! And the chair doesn't even stink, and it's quite comfortable. This is now my "mother's chair" for during lessons. This is the only comfortable chair on that level of the house. I'd like to get some red beaded fringe to put around the bottom of the lamp.

My attempts to accessorize with red were also helped by my Christmas gift from my mom, this big red clock:


Cool, huh? Looks like it was made for my house.