…so I thought I’d post about the sweet finds I scored today at Rejuvenation for our 3 new upstairs bedrooms, staircase and back dormer. I found 8 gorgeous light fixtures on clearance + got an additional 25% off on most of them.

The master bedroom will sport two Turner swing arm wall mounted fixtures as bedside lights in Antique Copper ($72.75 down from $165 each),

and a Willis fixture in a matching copper finish ($55 down from $119) that has an old fashioned cloth covered electrical cord for a ceiling light.

The staircase that leads up into the back dormer/sun room will be lit by this funky fixture called Mock’s Crest in Burnished Antique ($100.50 down from $259), which harks back to when electricity was a new invention and nobody knew if it was going to replace gas (hence the double lights, one powered by electricity and one by gas),

and the back dormer will get two Mt. Angel fixtures in the matching Burnished Antique finish (regular $133, discontinued at $38.25 a piece).

The girls’ bedrooms will each have a Thurman light in Burnished Antique ($42 down from $80).

We still need glass shades for all of them, but that can wait for another day!

And yes, this means that the upstairs is *this* close to being move in ready! The walls for all the rooms are up, drywalled and mostly completely mudded. They still need priming and then they will wait for us to win the lottery, so we can afford to have American Clay earth plaster installed everywhere.

The old growth fir floor is going back in as we speak (well type), and will be refinished in the next few days. There’s still lots to do: framing in new closets in the kids’ bedrooms, trim work everywhere, and finally the huge undertaking of adding a 2nd bathroom upstairs.

But, at the very least, we plan to move into our new master bedroom by next week! So exciting!!!

wait, that sounds too pretentious.
i am the master of the flame. no, no… that sounds too west hollywood.
i am the master of the fire. yes. yes, that will do.

i finally learned to build a proper fire in a fireplace. not one that smokes too much (we have a poorly designed flue). not one that burns out too fast. not one that smolders out before burning completely. none of those; a fire that kicks out some good heat into the room, burns at 1015f (546c) at it’s heart, looks nice and lasts quite a while. i’m talkin’ about a fire that when seen, one says “good lawd, now that’s a fire!”

roughly 1/4 of the fir (and some cedar) tongue and groove we removed from upstairs was pretty trashed. some can be re-sawn, planed and used for other stuff… some is just trash. the trash wood makes for awesome firewood, though… in other words, free heat. and, get it to burn well enough, it’s pretty carbon neutral

tonight, the furnace was coming on 4 times/hour to maintain the inside temp of 65f (not balmy, by any means).  once the fireplace had been going for 45 minutes or so, the temperature was maintained without aid of the biodiesel furnace.  the living room (where the fireplace is) is currently 72f, the furnace is off for the night.  it’s obviously colder in the rest of the house, but the lowest measured point is 61f… not bad since it’s 43f outside, we’ve got no insulation to speak of, the attic is wide open, and the fireplace being the only heat source…

separating the pile: