Day 24

I never knew I could be so in love.........with blinds! (More on that later)

Yesterday we drove out to the other side of the city to pick up a dresser/changer from Craigslist, and went to pick up the blinds. Shopping from craigslist is always a little risky (serial killers aside) but I do it quite often and I love it.

This particular piece caught my eye a while ago, before we even had the crib, but I was waiting on it. First I wanted to have a better idea of the crib color, and then I just didn't have the cash. But I kept an eye on it and even after the seller lowered the price from $100 to $90 it was still there. Finally I was able to contact the seller and even though I thought $90 was an okay price, I wanted to get the best price I could so I asked her to name her lowest price, she said $75 and I said I'd take it. When we got there I was very happy to see that it was a high quality piece, very solid and well made. To be fair it does have a few scratches, and the color doesn't quite match our crib, but overall it was a great find!


From there we went to Bed Bath and Beyond for the blinds. Because we live in a parsonage the blinds are something the church is "responsible" for, but we wanted something a little higher quality than they had previously had, and I wanted cordless in order to be as safe as possible. Also the windows are pretty wide at 39" all of which combines to equal a little bit of a higher price tag.  So I searched for the lowest price, and found a coupon and checked to make sure the church was okay with the cost. We ended up getting some honeycomb cellular cordless blinds and I believe the brand is Insola. The total cost was $97 and change. We went with the dark brown to match

with the crib and to get maximum darkening benefits for nap times and early morning. Today I spent a couple hours putting them up and I am in loooove! They weren't hard to instal and would have even been much easier with a drill but I don't have one and I was too impatient to wait to find one I could borrow. So I made a pilot hole by hammering a nail in and then removing it and screwed the brackets in with a regular screwdriver, elbow grease, and determination. Even with the extra effort it wasn't bad and what took me a couple hours would take probably 20 minutes with power tools. And they look amazing I'm so happy with the purchase. Seriously If you want to do one thing to make your house look better, install these blinds. Seriously do it now!

Also today I went out to Lowes to get our new light fixture. Of course I got an awesome deal again and picked up one for $17.00 and I actually like it the best out of the other ones in the under $30 range. It's the Portfolio brand. D and I worked together to instal it and let me tell you I will not be upset if I never have to put up another light fixture again, what a pain that was. Im sure it might have had something to do with the fact that it only cost $17 but it can also be blamed once again on our lovely old house.


The instructions were so simple and stated that it was easy to instal in about 20 minutes. I think it took us most of an hour. To start with it said to attach the black wire to black and the white wire to white. Sounds easy enough except our wires were so old and dirty and damaged that they were both a dark grey. So we just guessed and figured it would either work or not work. That wasn't so bad just a little confusing. The hard part was assembling the darn fixture where none of the screws lined up as they should and one wouldn't even hold the light to the ceiling and another had to be lined up just so and of course this is all happening while the light is supposed to be held flush against the ceiling yeah right. Oh well eventually we got it up there and it was time for the big test. D went down to turn the breaker back on when he got back we flipped the switch together and....it worked! I still have a small fear that we might have done something wrong and it could catch on fire or something haha but the rational part of me says we didn't do any real electrical work so it should all be fine.

And I stumbled across this pretty switchplate while I was out and for $3 I just had to get it. It's a minor detail but it looks alot better than the off white plastic one that was there.




So now that we have window coverings, a light, and a dresser the room is really starting to come together. Unfortunately all the work today made quite a mess so I guess my next project will be cleaning again. Probably not until Monday though because we have other stuff going on the rest of the weekend.
Happy SuperBowl watching.






Links
Insola Cordless Blinds
Portfolio Ceiling Light