LIghts out!

On December 30, 2012November 25, 2020 By stefrobrtsIn TheRanchoLeave a comment

Story time: The other night Dave stretched out his foot and bumped the outlet under his desk where the computer is plugged in, and the computer lost all power and turned off. I heard his agonized scream, as he had been working on something, of course. So he reached under the desk and wiggled the plug, and all the lights in the front half of the house went out – uh oh!

He went out to the garage to see if the fuse had blown, and I stayed inside, and after a few minutes the lights came on, and I shouted th news to him out in the garage, to hich he replied ‘I haven’t done anything yet’. Uh oh, that’s even worse!

So we thought about it, wiggled it and saw the lights flicker on and off, and finally threw the fuse to shut it all down, and called our friend Scott, the electrician. He recommended pulling the outlet out to see if a wire had come loose. We pulled it out, but the wires were fine, so the problem must have been in the outlet. It was one of several outlets in the house that were kind of loose anyway. So we headed off to the hardware store.

Half an hour later we were back and Dave installed the new outlet, threw the fuse, and everything was back to working all hunky-dory. We bought a few extra sockets, because I think we’ll need to replace those other loose outlets as well, just to be safe. Glad this was such an easy fix!

The bedroom ceiling light

On December 26, 2012November 25, 2020 By stefrobrtsIn TheRancho1 Comment

Our bedroom came equipped with this enormous ceiling fan:

It was seriously HUGE, and hung down so low Dave could hit his head on it, and we both regularly bumped it when putting on shirts, or doing anything that involved raising our arms above our head. I couldn’t do exercise videos without moving off to the side away from it! I can’t imagine laying in bed and having that giant fan whipping away overhead!

So today we took it down and replaced it with a nice ceiling fixture. We picked one that had a sort of clean, retro look to it, with a cloth shade. I quite like it.

It lights up the room very nicely, I just had to take a very fast picture to get the color of the shade to show up without the picture being overexposed. And no one will be bumping their head on this!

The last major pieces for the kitchen

On December 17, 2012November 25, 2020 By stefrobrtsIn mouse, TheRancho3 Comments

The kitchen is where we spend a lot of our time, and so we wanted it to look just right. I’m overjoyed with the cool vintage cabinets, and we needed some nice vintage furniture to go with them – mostly a hutch to handle overflow because there’s not enough storage, and a nice vintage table to sit under that awesome UFO light.

We actually found the hutch a couple weeks ago, but waited until we’d looked around a bit more. Since we didn’t find anything we liked better, we went ahead and bought it.

It replaces the honey pine bookcase which we gave to a friend. This has a lot more storage, and the dark walnut formica matches the dark cabinets nicely. I like the open shelves for my cookbooks, and I can display some of my pretty vintage bowls and cups. I had to set my mixer and food processor on top because they are too big to store in any of the cabinets!

It has these neat space-age drawer pulls. Love it!

Dave was out doing some shopping during the day and spotted a dining room table he really liked. He called me up and said it was great, and he was going to buy it. I wasn’t too sure, since I hadn’t seen it in person, but I think he has a good eye, so I said ok. Of course he’d already bought it…

I love it! Mouse loves it too! It has a nice pattern on top. The formica isn’t too dark, and the chairs are in excellent condition. Since I plan to paint the kitchen yellow, I think they will fit in perfectly.

So that’s the last major addition to the kitchen. Not room for anything else anyway. Now I can concentrate on cleaning the cabinet doors, fixing the dings and scratches, and then getting a nice coat of wax on them. They are already starting to glow.

Dave says The Rancho is like the Airstream – about the same vintage, same type of cabinets, and feels about as small – so we have to keep everything organized and neat! It’s great. Just like the Airstream, it already feels very much like home.

More vintage lamps

On December 16, 2012November 25, 2020 By stefrobrtsIn TheRancho3 Comments

First of all, no 70s home is complete without a swag lamp. Lets take care of that.

Dave found this neat lamp on Craigslist, and went and picked it up in NE Portland, where it had spent the last 40 years or so hanging in a lovely 60s house. It was a pendant lamp, and wired directly into a box in the ceiling. So all we needed to do was turn it into a swag lamp. Luckily getting a swag lamp kit from the hardware store, and a new socket was no big deal. We reassembled it and tested it out and then hung it in the living room.

Hey that looks great! Wait a minute…DOH! Can you see the problem? Back to the workbench.

After disassembling it, moving a few pieces around, and reassembling the socket again, everything was back where it belonged. Now we can sit back and admire our new swag lamp!

For lamp #2, we have a special lamp which I have been trying not to break for the last 7 years or so, since I found it in my Aunt Margie’s basement while clearing out her estate. It is a Plastco Chalkware lamp.

Why is this lamp special to me? Well, it’s cool. Plus, take a look at this picture of my Dad on his wedding day:

Check out that awesome lamp on the table behind him! That’s my lamp!

Unfortunately I can’t find an awesome lampshade like that for it, at least without spending a fortune. I cleaned up the lamp, rewired it with a new socket and cord, and set it aside. Today I was walking through a store and happened to spot a shade I thought would do the trick. Maybe someday I’ll get it a proper vintage shade, but for now, I thought this looked pretty nice.

Kitchen Light

On December 9, 2012November 25, 2020 By stefrobrtsIn TheRancho1 Comment

Continuing our upgrades, Dave scored a nice vintage light cover for the kitchen. It’s 19 inches across, which is HUGE, and has little dots/bumps all over it for the light to sparkle through. We had no problem removing the old light and fitting a new fixture. The new light shade covers everything, and even hangs down enough to fit fluorescent bulbs underneath.

I think the kitchen is really looking up now. Most important, we’re both having a lot of fun finding these treasures for our house, and getting them installed!

We were at Home Depot looking at lights last night, when a lady came up and said ‘We have a special offer for people who don’t like their kitchen cabinets..’ and we looked at each other and said ‘No thanks, we LOVE our kitchen just the way it is!’. No Home Depot kitchen for me!

Woodpiles

On December 8, 2012November 25, 2020 By stefrobrtsIn navi, TheRancho1 Comment

When we moved in, there were two big woodpiles, one on either side of the yard, covered in ugly brown tarps.

We peeked under the tarps and discovered some mouse poison right after we took possession, so we spent some time looking for any more of it before we brought the dogs over, and then I’ve watched them like a hawk while they’re out in the yard to make sure they didn’t find any we missed. If those logpiles weren’t already on my to-do-list, that put them there for sure – the woodpiles had to go!

So Last weekend a friend came over along with two other friends with full size trucks, thinking they’d each take a load of wood and it would all be gone. Not quite. It took FIVE full size pickup bed loads to clear the piles away! The one closest to the house was the oldest, and a lot of the wood was rotten and full of termites! Yikes! They took as much of that as they could too.

That left me with a lot of debris to clean up:

And a new, and not entirely enjoyable view, of the neighbor’s yard!

Hey, I moved away from the farm to get away from that sort of ramshackle chicken coop/blue tarp stuff! Oh well.

The other pile left less of a mess. At least it was all good wood, none of that rotten stuff. But it was still full of mice and rat droppings. I didn’t find any more poison hidden in the piles. The boxes had looked pretty old, so it had probably all been consumed by mice long ago, but I wouldn’t take a chance of the dogs getting any. I’m sure we displaced a lot of rodents though.

Much to Navi’s delight. She’s been hunting mice every time she goes outside. She caught one the other day. She’s fast! I don’t think these mice came out of the woodpiles though, she’s been hunting mice in the garden area.

Our next big outdoor project is to clean up the big garden and reseed it for grass so the dogs will have more grassy area to play in. I don’t need that much garden anyway! Not sure when we’ll get a dry weekend to do that.

Maple Leaf Swag

On December 7, 2012November 25, 2020 By stefrobrtsIn TheRancho2 Comments

My husband is so awesome! He surprised me with this lamp today!

This is a special lamp, because it’s exactly like the lamp that was in Grandma’s house! I saw one on ebay but it was really expensive. By some miracle Dave spotted one on Craigslist (for a lot cheaper) and went and picked it up while I was at work. I came home and saw it all lit up in the window – I couldn’t believe it! The one at Grandma’s house was right by the front door, so it was the first thing you saw driving up in the driveway. This gave me warm fuzzies to see it here in our little ‘vintage’ house!

The UFO

On December 6, 2012November 25, 2020 By stefrobrtsIn TheRancho1 Comment

Sherry and Scott (and Sake and Sitka) came over for dinner – first dinner party at our new house! And after dinner Scott installed our new lamp. I held a flashlight, that counts as helping, right? I was amazed when it lit up, because it did something I hadn’t expected – the fiberglass shade lit up like a UFO! So cool! I couldn’t be more happy with this little treasure!

But…now I’m going to need a vintage table to go with it!

Furnishing the Rancho

On December 2, 2012November 25, 2020 By stefrobrtsIn dave, TheRancho1 Comment

Now that we have started to settle into our charming little Mid-Century house, we decided to go looking for some Mid-Century furniture to go with it. We did not have a lot of furniture to bring from the other house, much of it was so worn out it went to the dump (even Goodwill wouldn’t take it), and we never had a real bedroom set.

The first thing Dave wanted to replace was our country-style knotty pine buffet. Not that there was anything wrong with it, it just fit into the farm-house better than it does here.

So we went shopping around antique stores until we found a nice vintage bedroom set that struck our fancy:

Love it! This is the sort of furniture we both grew up with, and it looks very cool. Just what we wanted.

And it has a matching dresser!

Look at those little legs! So awesome!

Our bedroom is shaping up nicely!

Next on our list was a vintage swag light for the front room, which we didn’t find, but we found something we weren’t looking for – a pull-down dining room light to replace the large greek-style modern lamp a previous owner installed (which doesn’t fit with the kitchen style at all).

Here’s a better look at it:

It has a brass base with a large fiberglass disk. It’s just too awesome! We found it at an antique mall and the note on it said it was new (by which we assume he meant it had never been installed), and had a piece of the original box label.

I can’t wait to get this installed in the dining room. Things are going to be pretty retro-cool at the Rancho if we keep having this sort of luck!

Almost done

On November 20, 2012 By stefrobrtsIn airstream, TheRancho2 Comments

This has been a very stressful two weeks! We started moving into our house just over a week ago. On that Saturday a friend came over and helped us load furniture, and with a small box moving truck, his pickup, and our full size van, we moved everything we needed for the house in pretty much one move, except little this and that stuff. When we got to looking around the new house, it needed more cleaning than we expected! But we moved in anyway, and have been cleaning while we go – exhausting!

Also, we decided to use the moving truck to get a load of garbage from our house to take to the dump. Since we were doing that anyway, we looked around the new house to see if he’d left any garbage. We started throwing stuff in the truck, piles of stuff here and there around the backyard, stuff hidden in the garage, even a rusty old pickup bed cap leaning against the house. Two hours later we’d filled the truck! That hadn’t been in our plan! So we got that stuff hauled to the dump right before it closed.

The past week has been a blur of working late nights, getting everything moved over, cleaning up the old house, and getting my husband’s business moved into storage. thank goodness he doesn’t work during the day, or we couldn’t have gotten this far! We’re finding it challenging to stuff everything into our tiny house.
The biggest accomplishments in the last two days:

The trailer, snuggled into it’s spot in the backyard.

The Mustang, safe and dry in the tiny garage.

I’d say I felt worse about leaving our farm, but there’s been no time to reflect on it. Just working, eating out (because we haven’t gotten our kitchen unpacked and cleaned until yesterday) and sleeping good and hard straight through the night – that’s what physical labor will do for you. Lots of ibuprofin for my sore muscles!

The official handoff is Tuesday evening, so we’re almost done. It will be nice to finally sit back and get to know our new house and for our lives to settle into what I hope is a much less stressful routine than the last few years has been.

Steff Does Stuff!

Category: TheRancho