Replace Energy Sucking Landscape Floodlights with LED for $1

Have low-voltage flood lights around your house? I do... 13 of them.

At 20 watts a bulb, that's a lot of energy consumption for all intents and purposes, decorative lighting.

You can easily retrofit these kits and fixtures with LED light bulbs from big box stores, but you will be paying for them, to the tune of about $7 per bulb.

Standard, incandescent 20 watt bulb vs energy efficient LED

I'm happy to share that I've found an alternative to the expensive bulbs from Home Depot and Lowe's! These cost from 90 cents to about a dollar a piece. That's a savings of hard, cold cash and a whopping 17 WATTS per light!

G4 LED COB 3W warm or cool white bulb.

Did I mention they are available in cool or warm white? Here's pictures after installation:

Back garage line, 3 lights

Side of house, 3 lights

Buy them here: G4 LED COB 3W warm or cool white bulb.

The planet, and your wallet, will thank you.

Vintage Edison Hanging Bedroom Lights

When we upgraded to a king sized-bed, we had to give up our existing nightstands. This was fine as they tend to fill up with junk anyway, but it did present a problem for bedside lighting.

Out of necessity, we bought some parts from Ikea and the Home Depot, and we made these lovely wall mounted lights with vintage filament bulbs.

EKBY VALTER Bracket, black, 11" $5.00
SEKOND Cord set with LED bulb, black, white textile $13.00
Feed-through cord switch (available anywhere) $3.99
Adamax Metal Lamp Guard $4.97
Feit 60-Watt Vintage Style Incandescent Light Bulb $4.94


Total for one lamp: $31.90







I'll show off the shelving soon.

LED Color-Changing Under Cabinet Lighting for $35!!

This is such a cool project. We ended up putting a new outlet in the back of one of the cabinets to hide wires, but on the other bank of cabinets, we plugged the LED's in behind the fridge.

There isn't much technical explaining here, and as we seem to run new Romex for every project we get into, so I guarantee that's covered elsewhere in this blog. For this one, just enjoy the photos and a video, too.

Kitchen TV and Outlet Installation

At the beginning of November, we upgraded our smartphones and purchased LG G4's from Best Buy. Little did we know, we got free 24" flat panel tv's with each purchase.

I mean right??

So that means in addition to our old 24" flat screen, we now had 2 more! Why not put one in the kitchen?

Before: Where a clock used to be.

Sunday Vaseline

We're taking the kitchen remodel slowly.

Guy and I spent the past hour trying to run Romex for a new outlet to go behind the refrigerator. Finally we accomplished this with a fish tape, pliers, electrical tape, and gobs of Vaseline.

Here's some photos of the progress and a bonus... the little trinkets we found while ripping the vent soffit down!

Hole cleaned up

Mid Century Chrome Chandelier

Take two photoshoot! I'm doing some digging around, I'd like to uncover who the manufacturer of this chandelier was and when it's from. I've found a few sales listings for similar hanging lights, but they don't have much information, either. I've found fixtures that have four, five and even eight lights. I'm guesing the mid to late 1960's on this. Did it have different manufacturers? Which style of globes did it come with?

Source	Source
Source	Source

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Paint and Patchwork

Patch, patch, patch. That's what our back entrance really needed.

It was pretty beat up and neglected, not to mention filthy.

It's been done for about a week now (done-ish) and looks a LOT better.

Before: Was a dirty brown, the walls, ceiling and baseboards were all painted the same color. There were holes galore. The light was an old acorn style.

Someone fucking hated this wall.

After: Ceiling white, oops paint, drywall mud save the day and a snazzy new flush-mount ceiling light. I LOVE the light fixture, and it actually gives off more like than the acorn fixture.

Our $8 "oops" paint from Walmart

Hampton Bay Flaxmere Round purchased on eBay for $22!

I have some nickel coat hooks I'm going to install, probably, near the switches. I'm still devising the prettiest way to do it, of course.

My First Strike on Natural Woodwork

Over the last few days I've been sanding and painting. My poor manicure just doesn't stand a chance.

I am happy to say though, that I have 2 coats on one half of the kitchen woodwork and my first coat on the other, which is also the living room entrance. Yay! Look closely and you'll see my new linoleum floor, too!

Before

After

The window and door, painted!

 I have 2 lights to replace that 90's white ones (with gold leaves!) that are currently hung in the kitchen.

 Guy and I got the new oven and fridge in, too!

This weekend we're going to go through and replace as many switches and outlets as we can while we have daylight.

 And I'd like to get the kitchen painted, as I've got the paint and supplies ready to go. See the paint on the bottom? It was just a little over $8 on the oops rack at Walmart. It's a perfect color for the back entrance/stairway into the basement.

Little Cape's New Power!

The Little Cape Cod has a brand new service panel! What a far cry from this hot mess!


Better, isn't it? I would SO highly recommend A&M electric if you need an HONEST electrician in the Cleveland area. I am so happy with the work they provided and how friendly they were. To boot, they were 50% cheaper and 75% cheaper than my other 2 estimates.

I also picked out the peel and stick tile that's going to get us through at least a few years in the kitchen:

Armstrong "Slate Sand & Sky"

 Not bad at $.75 a tile. I figure for about $100 I can have the kitchen floor done, which works, because it's on the POS... how convenient!

The hardwood is gonna get sanded and poly'd, too... so we have out work cut out for us, and by all means, if you've any spare cash laying around...

The Warms! The Brights!

Well, we got our gas up and running last night, so *finally*, it's toasty in there.

As of about 10 minutes ago, my electric is being ripped out and replaced. I love getting it done before Christmas.

I'm old 60 Amp service and I suck

Guy has a 4 day weekend coming up, and even though that includes Christmas eve and day, I'd love to be able to get over there and work on the plumbing.

I failed to mention the plumbing - agh. When we made the offer on the house, the plumbing was fine. About a week before we closed, someone broke in the front door and clipped every piece of copper they saw in the basement. We couldn't do a thing about it, for fear of ruining the loan, so we're quite literally taking a "bath" on this one.

However, once we get the PEX put in, we can get the water turned on, and then worry about killing off the rest of the POS.

Happy 6 days till Christmas, folks!