Getting lit

Contrary to what you may have been brought up to believe, it's what's on the outside that counts. At least when it comes to landscape lighting.

If you've been following this blog for any amount of time—and if you have, you might want to look into a Netflix subscription—you already know we went through a rather substantial remodel a couple years ago. If you'd care to refresh your memory about it, especially the parts where strangers marched through my house starting at sunrise, giant dumpsters blocked the street and the word "budget" lost all meaning, you can read up on it here, here and here.

While many great things came out of the remodel, like our new whisper-quiet Bosch dishwasher, a master bathroom that can accommodate (or is that a-commode-date?) more than one person at a time, about 50 sq. ft. more of living room and a bitchin' kitchen, one thing we unintentionally lost was our exterior lighting.

Since we were putting in a new electrical panel and circuit breakers, upping the amps (not that having circuits blow every time three appliances ran at the same time for 20 years wasn't fun) and rewiring the electrical, we also upgraded the outdoor lighting transformer. The one we had was over 20 years old, and the hamsters and hand crank that ran it were both getting worn out. So hello to a brand new, digital whammy-jammy transformer that immediately blew out the line to our existing exterior lights.

Even though we didn't let the fact we had no budget for many things during the process stop us, we literally had no budget left to fix the exterior lights. So for the past couple years, the only outside lights on the house have come from the inside. We do have plenty of overly sensitive sensor lights around, so if you come near the place they light up like Bret Kavanaugh at a frat party. But they're just a poor substitute for attractive, illuminating exterior light that increases the value of the house, says, "Hey, I see you out there." and makes the neighbors oooh and aaahhh at the place as they take their evening drives.

Right now I'm researching what seems like thousands of new fixtures on hundreds of web pages while our incredible electricians from the remodel are in standby mode. Hopefully I'll be able to flip the switch on the job soon.

I don't expect my house will look like the one in the top picture when it's done. But I'm hoping it'll at least look better than this one.

Short story

Our house, like most homes, has one thing in common with Disneyland: It’ll never be finished. There’s always something to spend money on.

But for some strange reason I'm sure has nothing to do with the fact I live a freelance life instead of having a real job, the funds aren’t always there. Even though the opportunities to spend them are.

So by necessity we’ve always taken a triage approach to the house. Stop the bleeding first.

Oh yeah, and don’t let a short in a plug burn the house down.

If you follow this blog (and really, shouldn’t you have better things to do with your time?), you’ll remember my joy about our new garbage disposal.

That came to a screeching halt over the weekend when my wife informed me it’d stopped working. Knowing the shape the power source lurking under the sink was in, I was pretty sure it wasn't the disposal's fault.

As you can see, the plug under the sink is really the monster under the bed you don't want to think about. At least I didn't, until the plumber that installed the disposal came back two days later to install filters for the ice-maker, and bumped the outlet box which was hanging by a thread. The (live)wires barely holding it became disconnected, and power was lost.

By the way, just FYI, you're supposed to change those ice-maker filters every six months. Not every three years. Turns out "black ice" is actually a driving term.

Anyway, we all have our own special set of skills. For example, if you need someone to write about fixing things in the house, I'm your guy. But if you need someone to actually fix them, not so much.

Because of my complete lack of skill (interest?) in repairing things around the house, I have a go-to list of people who are my home support system. So I went to it. I called our electrician, who repaired the outlet in about 20 minutes. I thought it would be a much bigger operation, but then I always think that. I was fully expecting he'd be ripping out drywall, rerouting conduits and waiting for inspectors.

None of that happened.

Instead he stripped the wires, replaced the outlet and secured the square box to the round hole in an almost upright position (coincidentally the same one I'm in most of the day).

Now when we throw the switch, the disposal happily grinds away. And once again I'm free not to think about the seamy underbelly of the kitchen sink.

Until six months from now when it's time to change the ice-maker filters again.