My pretties + excess pipe and wires!

I love, love, love School House lights! It seems only fitting. I was a bit aghast at the price of  them when I began to look into getting some for The Farm House. Not to be deterred, I checked my favorite salvage yard, but they had the shades only for $89. Too rich for my blood.  Time for eBay!

When we first bought the house, I bid on 3 really beat up fixtures with globes and won (I sorta forgot I bid on them so it was a surprise - there is a theme here).  Moose helped me to rewire them and I spray painted them. I so love the way they turned out in the boys' room.

I could just see all of the tacky 80's gold ceiling mount fixtures in the down, downstairs being replaced by fabulous School House fixtures.

To summarize the next few weeks: I found a lot of vintage fixtures (they are much harder to find than the globes); there was a bidding war; Matt was not loving the ending bid; I was super stoked.

They are a bit rough and rusty, but have no fear....spray paint fixes all sins!!! (Not to mention a bit of rewiring.)

Ahh, so much better.

I had to get creative on how to spray the ceiling mount as it kept moving around.

Matt dubbed this The Most Expensive Wind Chime- EVER.  

I have also been collecting old enamel lamp shades that were on old gas stations or barns. Moose said that we could easily bend a piece of pipe to make the barn light. My job was to find the shades and get the innards.  

 

Doesn't look like much right now, but hold on.... I sorta forgot that I put a bid on a couple so it turns out I have 4 shades total. (Deep breath, Matt.) Have you heard that before?

 Good news because I need 4. It is possible that Moose found 4 places to put these lights to get me out of the dog house, but let's just think about how cool they will look.

Yeah!!!

In other exciting news, the plumbers came!  This might not seem that exciting, but the plumbing in this house rivals a maze. Moose spent 2 days trying to make sense of the pipes just to prep the plumbers. 

Moose and Michael usually feel comfortable doing the plumbing on their jobs, but our house was just too much of a mess. To give you an idea, I have knocked off the drain from under the kitchen sink because it wasn't glued in. The down, downstairs bathroom used to smell like a bad public bathroom until Moose discovered that sewer gas was coming back up the pipes because the pipes were not sealed properly. AKKK!

Back to the plumbers. Michael had a friend who squeezed us into his schedule (he is booked until next year) to fix our plumbing. The guys who showed up were stoic. Very stoic. My compliments to their hard work and gratefulness for them coming to work here was met with pressed lips and a nod. Tough crowd. Thankfully Michael was here to make sure all was well. (They mainly spoke Ukrainian.)

I left for a bit to get C from the bus and when I got back I checked in with them. I found one very stoic plumber, sweating profusely, while trying to use a sawzall to cut out chunks of copper pipes out of the wall. He looked up at me and said "There are too many pipes!!!!!" I tried to explain that the former owner said he was a contractor and might have done the work himself.  To this he exclaimed, "NO PLUMBER DID THIS!!!!!"

Oh-kay. I will let them work their magic. 

They stayed until 7:45 PM on the last night. They didn't say good-bye. Matt and I only knew they left by the huge dust cloud they created as they raced down the gravel drive. Was this house a plumber's nightmare???

Let me show you the piles of pipes:

This is the pile right now, but more is to come.

All this pipe is money to me. We will take it to the scrap yard and sell it. It is a gold mine! This has brought out a bit of crazy in me. I dug through a trash can to get a little piece. Every little bit counts....

A similar story could be told about the electrical wire. 

Extra wire.

Look at this mess. Moose had already worked on removing the excess.

I really want him to get rid of the old Knob and Tube. I feel a fire coming on and we have already gotten to know the fire department better than we should.

This is my personal favorite. When replacing old wiring, just stick it back into an ancient circuit breaker and sheet rock over it. Awesome. 

I am so thankful that these things are being fixed!