Redecorating - Pass or Fail?

My husband and I are not what one would call "change it up" people when it comes to household decorating.

The bed sits in the same place it has since 1987, as does the sofa, though both have been changed out for new items since the originals were put in place. I don't change pictures on the wall, or paint often, or hang wallpaper. I had some wallpaper in the bathroom but it is gone, as is the wallpaper I had in the kitchen. Both were up for at least 15 years before we removed them.

Lately I have had an urge to make a few changes. Nothing big, mind you. I wanted some new art work on the walls, new bath mats, new shower curtains.

The bath mats were a matter of ending one load of laundry. We have two bathrooms and the mats were brown in one and blue in the other, and I had to wash them separately. I wanted to make them the same color so I could eliminate one load of laundry. I settled on gray. Very drab and boring, but I could use it with the bluish to gray shower curtain in the master bathroom.

It's a silvery-gray bathmat. Wahoo!

However, it required a new shower curtain in the other bathroom. The curtain I had up was this:

This made the bathroom rather dark, even though the walls and everything else is off-white.

So my husband, being helpful, picked out this shower curtain:

Looks like a hippo with pink stripes.

I despised this shower curtain. Last week he was away for a few days, and I went and bought this:

It is an improvement, anyway.

Then I decided I wanted to do something to the mirror edging in the master bathroom. It had been oak wood colored but the last time we painted the bathroom, which was about two years ago now, we had the fellow paint over the wood edging because it was cracking and looked bad. I wanted to replace the entire medicine cabinet/mirror but we couldn't find anything to fit that hole in the wall at all.

This is what it looked like until this morning:

Kind of blah.

In 2013, we had remodeled the bathroom to exchange the tub for a walk-in shower (a fortunate endeavor given my later health concerns). In the remodeling, we couldn't find replacements for the antique brass plumbing and light fixtures that we had previously, so we went with oil-bronzed, I think it is called. Anyway, it is a lot darker than what we had before.

I thought about simply painting the frame a dark color to match the lights. Then I thought I might try stenciling. I have a friend who has been telling me to try a project.

So I bought some stencils.

This is the result:

I don't know yet what the husband will think, but I suspect a can of dark oil-bronzed paint is in my future.

We'll see.

Breaker Break Down

Friday, I rose and like I always do, I flipped the thermostat up as I walked by on the way to the kitchen to start the hot water for my tea. (We keep the house at 66 degrees at night.) I could tell within minutes that something wasn't right.

After checking things out, I realized the heat pump wasn't running. The thermostat said the auxiliary heat was on. I kept smelling something and I assumed it was the furnace, since we generally don't need the auxiliary heat. I checked the breakers, which all seemed to be on, and called my husband to make sure there wasn't something else I needed to examine.

He advised me to call the heat pump people, which I did. They had someone out here by 10:30. I had everything off and so at the heat pump man's request, I turned it all back on again. The heat pump did not start, and that strange odor occurred.

The heat pump man quickly realized the issue was not in the heating system. The breaker box was burning. Yikes!

He threw the main and then examined the breaker box. One of the breakers had melted at its end.

Scorched breaker box.

Burned out breaker

This was not something he could fix. He spoke on the phone with my husband, who said he would be home in 30 minutes. In the meantime, I needed to leave for a dentist appointment, but I started scrolling through the phone book in search of an electrician. I fortunately found someone who would come out. The man would be there by noon.

With my husband on his way home, and the house seemingly not in any hurry to burn down, I went to the dentist. By the time I returned, everything was back to normal.

It was scary, though. Imagine what might have happened if I hadn't turned the furnace off.

The WallPaper Conundrum.

Sometimes ideas don't pan out.

Here's one.

About 10 - 15 years? - a very long time ago - I thought I would like to brighten the living room. We have dark bookcases by the fireplace. As I age, I seem to want things lighter.

Dark bookcase.

So those many, many years ago, I purchased a roll of wallpaper. My thought was I could tack it (not actually plaster it) against the back of the bookshelves and lighten things up a bit.

This was the wallpaper.

I also liked the wallpaper. It was whimsical enough to suit me but yet not distressingly so.

It had this little moon.

And this little star



And this really cool sun.

And this really cool thing, too.

However, this was a two-person project and I could never find any help, so the wallpaper sat in the corner of my office.

For a good decade. Maybe longer than that.

When we cleaned my office, there was the wallpaper in the corner. I took it into the living room and slid it up a couple of shelves to demonstrate to my husband what I wanted to do with it.

The shelving with the wallpaper behind it.

I left it a few days in hopes that it would grow on my husband.

He did not like it.

I took pictures of the wallpaper (see above) and gingerly sat it beside the trash can, as I could not bring myself to throw it away.

I made him do that.

Good idea? Yes? No?

I guess it doesn't matter anymore.

Before and After

After I became ill in 2013, my efforts at keeping my office clean, which were already somewhat out of hand, took a turn for the worse.

So much so that the place was really bugging me, and has been for almost two years.

Finally, I asked my husband to help me pitch some things out of here. That was my 34th anniversary present.

We tossed over 450 pounds of crap out of this room. And that doesn't include filing cabinets and drawers, but we will get to those another day.

Here are some before and after shots:

Before. Note that the curtains do not match.
 

The closet, which could not be closed.

A close-up of my desk area.
 

There is a printer under there, somewhere.

A corner.

Bookshelves.

So that was before.  Now?

Cleaned up with matching curtains.

Corner is clearer.



Closet is much straighter and emptier.

And it closes!

No junk in this corner!

Everything is much neater. It is now a place where I can resettle. Before it was still a news reporter's office - but I am no longer a news reporter. Now it is just an office.

Hopefully I can figure out what I want to be when I grow up, and turn this into a different sort of office. Maybe an author's office. Or maybe an adjunct professor's office. Or maybe it will just stay an office, my place to go to be online and hide out from the world. I don't know.

Time will tell. In the meantime, I need to change a few items on the walls. But I must find the right things to put up.

Becoming someone new takes time.

My Rocking Chair

The week after my mother died, back in August 2000, I marched into Grand Home Furnishings at Valley View and purchased a rocking chair.

For some reason, I wanted - no, I needed - a rocking chair.

I found one that I could purchase straight off the floor and had my husband go up and get it later that afternoon.

I placed the chair and accompanying ottoman where I could watch TV and rock. It was not a place I sat every day, but when I needed a little comforting, I would take a book and spend a bit of time there.

And then two years ago, the sofa broke, and we went through this long saga of getting new furniture. The end result of that was I ended up with a La-Z-Boy recliner/rocker and a living room full of furniture.

So yesterday, my rocking chair went to a new home. Like many of our hand-me-downs, a young firefighter now possesses this. 

A part of me was sorry to see it go, but the room certainly looks less cluttered. Now we have to purchase new end tables and rid ourselves of the old Ashley glass tables.

We are not very changeable, my husband and I. We tend to put the furniture where we want it and leave it there. This living room upheaval has been frustrating (not to mention costly) and I hope that by Thanksgiving we will have the room back in order, with the new end tables and pictures and all back on the wall (we painted in April; the pictures are still in the floor of the spare room).

I think ridding myself of the rocker was an interesting challenge in letting go. It served me for 15 years - and that's a good long time for an impulse purchase of a piece of furniture. It had done its due, and we're moving into a new phase as we age.

Time change. You go from green to tan. But the tan still rocks, so the comfort remains.

Sofas, Smell, and Stench, Oh My!

On March 22, I wrote about our issues with sofas. We've been trying to obtain new furniture since July of last year. Our 10-year-old Ashly sectional broke, so we bought new furniture at Grand, two over-sized love seats.

After two months, the one we were sitting in broke. I allowed them to fix it, and we sat in the other, and after two months, it broke.

They replaced that, but the furniture smelled so badly that we moved it to the garage, and ultimately ended up asking Grand to take it away.

So we picked out different furniture, and it was delivered on April 30.

 

 

 

The furniture is all the same color, it just doesn't look it in the light. We hadn't planned on the chair, but from early February until the end of April we had nothing to sit in but lawn furniture. My back couldn't take it and they had the power chair that matched the furniture on the floor at the Tanglewood Grand store, so I bought it so we'd have something to sit in.

The chair had a mild odor after it was delivered. By the fourth day, I could no longer smell it.

The new furniture at first did not seem to smell, but then after we'd had it about four days, the odor began in earnest. It was not as bad as the other furniture (which the delivery man informed us stunk up his truck for two days after he picked it up; it was the same fellow), but bad enough to keep me out of the kitchen and living room.

Once again we put out baking soda and charcoal absorbers to try to eliminate the odor. We ran fans. Finally, I found a product called Ozium Air Sanitizer, available in automotive stores (and probably others), which claims on the bottle to reduce airborne bacteria and eliminate smoke and malodors. It seemed to help, so I started spraying it three or four times a day in the living room.

The Ozium smells a bit like lemon when it is first sprayed.

I can now sit in the furniture for a while without it messing with my sinuses or giving me a sore throat. I don't stay in there for hours on end, but I can get back on the treadmill and watch HBO so long as it is not a long movie. My hope is that after a few days more I can treat the living room like, well, my living room.

The new furniture sits well and looks good. This time we bought a love seat and a sofa (and the unexpected purchase of the power recliner). The sofa is as big as the oversized love seats were in the other brand of furniture. We like the size of this furniture better, I think, though we were quite content with our original purchase until it broke.

Now our fingers are crossed that (a) this will stop smelling, which I am sure it will eventually, and (b) it holds up and doesn't break.

As an aside, I think furniture companies have a responsibility to inform purchasers of off-gassing issues with new furniture. Grand was good to work with but they did not really want to accommodate my request to hold the furniture in their warehouse, uncovered, for several weeks so it could air out. They held it for 10 days which obviously wasn't long enough, and the salesman was pushing me to get it delivered. Frankly, if they are going to sell this stuff with this odor, which can be hazardous to anyone with asthma or other lung issues, then they should set aside a place to let it air out for a long time before delivery. I can't be the only person in the area who is sensitive to this off-gassing.

If you type in "off gassing" on Google, you find this is an issue for many people and for many objects. This is what comes from deregulation and from lack of oversight of what companies sell. It is definitely a "buyer beware" sort of world. I have a feeling most of these things that stink are not good for you, and probably continue to create problems even after the odor eases. Some sites claim the odors and problems associated with it continue for up to a year.

The last time I had this much trouble with something was in 2005, when we purchased carpeting. After that experience, I have sword we will never again put in new carpet, which means hardwood floors or tile or something when the time comes to replace the carpet (which, since it is 10 years old, is not so far off).

While I am on the subject of stinking stuff, we had the living room painted while it was empty. The painter used Natura paint by Benjamin Moore, and it had only a mild odor. I am quite allergic to paint and was able to stand this without having my mouth and hands swell up, as sometimes happens with other brands.

The lessons learned here are many. First, lack of regulation allows anything to be sold in this country, and it doesn't matter whether it is healthy for you or if it will kill you - and unfortunately many of us, brought up in better times, still think there is a regulatory body out there that keeps harmful things from entering the consumer highway. That is not the case, however, and it is best to remember that. No one is going to look after you but you, and that is certainly true since the 1980s. It has always been so but I know growing up that civics courses taught otherwise - in the 1970s, at least, there was an indication that the government regulated manufacturers so that they couldn't sell stuff that would kill you. Or at least that was the impression I was left with. That is obviously no longer the case.

Second, deal with a reputable company so that if you have problems, you have recourse for remedy. Grand has been very good to deal with in this matter, and I think the fact that we purchased from a long-standing reputable dealer made a difference here. Get to know the folks you're dealing with, too.

Buying local, even if the stuff ultimately comes from across the sea, makes more sense every day.


*I have not been paid to talk about any product or company mentioned in this post.*

A Bad Purchase

Back in May 2010, we purchased new windows for our home. At that time, the windows were the original from 1987, and they leaked. During the winter the house was drafty and cold.

We did extensive research on window brands available, and ultimately settled on Gorell because at the time, they were listed as among the best and given high energy efficient ratings and blah blah blah.

Fast forward six years and we're ready to replace the damn things again. Most of them have already been replaced once under warranty because the glass did weird things and turned brown or the gas leaked out of the seal.

Unfortunately, Gorell went bankrupt in 2012. The company was bought out by Soft-Lite, which chose not to honor the lifetime Gorell warranty.

Instead they came up with some deal with the installer that if they sold so much of their product, they could then obtain warranty replacements. The installer refused to honor the window warranty as well, though they did (sort of) honor their free labor for 5 years portion of the agreement.

Toward the end of our five-year labor warranty with the installer, we parted with harsh words because the windows were (and are) crap and they wouldn't stand behind what they sold.

I have two windows now that look like this -

That is not screen. That is degeneration of the window glass. It has turned brown and you cannot see through it. We managed to get several replaced after Gorell went out of business but it was a trying task. It took well over a year to replace some of them, and during the time we waiting on those, others began to fail. 

 
Replacement windows are not cheap. We spent thousands of dollars on these. Some day soon we are going to have to do it again. These certainly aren't going to last as long as the windows we originally had on the house.

My guess is Gorell was beginning to have problems about the time we made our purchase, and we got the short end of things despite the raving reviews online in 2010. Probably about the time we received these windows, they were cutting quality because of financial issues which they obviously could not overcome.

The company that installed these windows, Southwest Sunroom and Windows, doesn't show up as a dealer for Soft-Lite anymore. The nearest dealer who comes up is in North Carolina, about 100 miles away.

The last time we tried to replace these, while still under the 5-year warranty, the installation company sent us a bill for both labor and the window. We didn't pay it and pointed out it was all still under warranty. They billed us several times and my husband had some angry phone conversations and we sent at least one letter before they stopped billing us.

If we want to replace the browned-out windows, I guess our only option would be to contact Soft-Lite and pay for them. But that is not happening. We will replace all of these windows with some other brand, at some point, and not spend any more money with a company that refused to stand behind the warranties it obtained during the bankruptcy sale.

And of course, we will use a different installer, having burnt that bridge over these horrible Gorell/Soft-Lite windows.

The drafty, cold air still comes in. It is especially apparent in the second-replaced windows, the ones made by Soft-Lite and not Gorell. They do not fit as well as the original Gorells. Of the original Gorells that did not fail (or have not so far), they seem to be okay. But I think of the 12 windows we originally replaced, about 7 of them failed, either with the gas leaking out or the window panes turning brown.

Buyer beware, is all I can say. Businesses all want one thing - your money - and they don't give a rat's ass if you are happy with the product or not. I think the installer should have stood behind the product; after all, they sold it to us. They should have offered to give us a complete set of windows of a different brand, but of course they weren't going to do that. I also think the company that bought out Gorell should have stood behind the warranty.

But we live in a world where it's all hooray for me and f&ck you, don't we? And guess where we ended up with these windows. It certainly wasn't on the "hooray for me" end.

The Sofa Saga

It started back in the spring of 2015, when the Ashley sectional sofa we had purchased in 2005 began showing signs of wear.

As in, bolts on one side of the recliner broke, tossing my husband into the floor. We replaced them, but after a few weeks they would shear off again.

The Ashley Sectional Sofa

It was a lovely sofa, and we spent many hours watching TV in the recliner/loveseat. The other part had a sleep-sofa on it. It did not sleep well but we did not use it much. The nephews slept on it a few times and found it so lumpy that they gave us an air bed for Christmas so they'd have something else to use.

I was expecting to get 20 years out the Ashley. Apparently, that is laughable in this day of replacement furniture. The recliners were not power, but required us to use a little force and exertion. After my surgery, I had difficulty getting in and out of the sofa and did not sit on it unless my husband was home.

So in July 2015, we went sofa shopping. We had been looking for a while. Ashley had a similar sectional but also there were literally over a thousand complaints against the company online, and we became a bit skittish about purchasing another sofa from them. Brands can drop in quality over the years and from what we were reading, Ashley seemed to be having issues.

Finally, at Grand Valley View, we ran across a brand of sofas called Southern Motion. It sat well and they had what we wanted - a love seat without the cup holder in the middle. We like to sit without something between us and hold hands while we watch TV. Maybe not the most important feature in a piece of furniture, but it mattered to us.

We didn't look the brand up online and made an impulse purchase, more or less, even though we'd been looking a while. We bought two of the love seats to replace the sectional. We don't entertain much and figured we could make the love seats last a while if we swapped them out once a year.

Two months after a late August delivery, the spring came through the back of one of the love seats.

Oops.

 

We called the furniture store and they sent out a repairman. I was not happy with having to have the entire backing of the furniture removed so soon after purchase, but I agreed to the repair. We then sat in the other sofa, the one that hadn't broken.

It broke after two months of use, too, right after the new year. Obviously the furniture style itself was defective. We called Grand, had a chat with the general manager (a very nice man), and he agreed to replace the furniture.

The new furniture finally arrived on March 1.

It stank.

I mean, it smelled like burned rubber tires. Even my husband could smell it and was put off by it, and he can barely smell anything. I was already ill with a cold and whatever was off-gassing from the furniture made me even more ill. My husband could tell my breathing was better every time we went out of the house. I couldn't sit on the furniture and for a week I was trapped in the back part of the house, avoiding the smell, because we have a great room with the kitchen and living room connected. We put out baking soda, activated charcoal, and bowls of white vinegar, and ran two air purifiers in the room. We opened the windows when feasible with the weather.

Finally, my husband brought home a friend and they moved the furniture into the garage.

With the garage door open, I was able to finally inspect the furniture.

I found flaws in the leather in the cushions. It doesn't show up well in the photo, but the leather was thin in two places, and looked as if it would split open about the third time we sat down.

I also noticed that the dye coloring on the leather was uneven. I could have lived with that. But I couldn't live with the thin leather in the cushion and the smell, not for what we paid for this furniture.

So back it went to Grand. I will give Grand much credit, for they have worked with us very well to try to resolve our issues.

Now we had no furniture. We went back to Grand but this time to the Tanglewood store, first, to see if they had anything different on the floor. We knew we would not purchase the same brand.

At Tanglewood, they had this very nice power recliner, but no love seat and sofa. The other store did have the love seat and sofa on the floor where we could see it.

So back to Valley View.

We liked the sofa and the love seat, but they were not power. I could not get the manual recliners to work at all, since I no longer have any abdominal muscles to speak of thanks to my multiple surgeries.

We ordered power furniture. Delivery is 10 to 12 weeks.

That's a long time to sit on the floor, so yesterday I decided to have the power recliner delivered, because they had that in stock. We hadn't planned on buying it but three months of trying to live without furniture when I'm already in pain did not seem like a good idea. I was afraid I'd be a pretzel by the time the love seat and sofa arrived.

One of the morals of the story? Most everything out there that you can purchase today is junk. Expensive junk. If you have your grandmother's sofa, you are better off to refurbish it and have it restuffed or refinished or whatever, if you can find someone to do that and you like the piece. It will last forever but the furniture you buy today will not. I am hoping to get 10 years out of this new furniture, and the sales people told me upfront that would be pushing it. But I have no children jumping around on things, or animals, and no one smokes to put holes in the leather, so maybe we can get the 10 years we want.

Another moral? Do your homework. Southern Motion does not have many complaints listed against it, but there are some. I think that is because it is a fairly new company. Most telling, I think, is the fact that their website doesn't have any contact information listed. They don't even say what state they are in (they're supposed to be a USA company). They have a Facebook page but do not respond to things there (or at least ignored my inquiry). If a company doesn't have a mailing address or other contact information on their Internet information, I think in the future that is not a company with which I will do business, especially for a major purchase.

The other moral? Deal with a reputable, long-standing company. I cannot commend Grand Home Furnishings enough for their customer service. They have been excellent to work with. Of course, I have an empty living room but they have dealt fairly with us as we try to resolve our issues. I feel confident that this time we will get furniture that will hold up and take care of our needs.

And I also feel confident that if for some reason it does not, then Grand will work with us yet again. But I sure hope it doesn't come to that.

I am too old to watch TV from the floor.

The Patio Project

A good 15 or 20 years ago, my husband and his cousin put down a deck outside the back of our house. Over the years it turned into an ugly, hideous looking thing that I was so ashamed of that I couldn't find a picture of the rear of the house in the last seven years or so.

I did find some partial photos that will give you an idea of how bad it looked:

The boards were coming up.

The stain was coming off.

Squirrels were eating the wood!

It was definitely time to do something about this. So this week the deck went out of here and a building contractor poured us a concrete patio to replace the wood.

The building contractor cutting rebar (?).

The patio formed up.

Just because I really like this picture. :-)

Ha. Men at work. Ain't that the way they do it?

Cement truck.



Pouring cement.



Raking the cement into place.

Forming it up and pouring and stuff.

Looks like playing in the mud, doesn't it?

It was fascinating to watch, really.

Troweling the cement to make it smooth.

More troweling.

Now it is taking shape!

Looking even better!

Almost done!

Ta da! Here it is. Not quite finished but almost.

Doesn't that look better?

We have to remove the boards after the cement has hardened. We still need to clean up and replant grass.

All in all, I think this will be a great fix to an ugly mess. The sidewalk is wide enough for a wheelchair, so now we're ready to get even older. I am looking forward to obtaining some nice planters in the spring and maybe a bench or two to place out here.

Job well done!