It has been quite a while since I posted last and I have a lot talk about, but I don’t have a lot of time right now. So I’m only going to focus on a few of the smaller details!

The first one is all of our heat registers and vents. They have been painted several times over the years so we decided we were going to try boiling them to get down to the metal. I managed to get one done and it was such a pain. Because they wouldn’t fit in a stock pot I put it in the sink and dumped boiling water in the sink.  I worked on this register for over two hours and then eventually quit.  I was able to get down to the very first and original layer of white, enamel paint. As you can probably imagine I was overwhelmed and frustrated with how I was going to get all of these cleaned up! Well I mentioned what I was doing to our main contractor and he suggested taking them in and having them sandblasted. Brilliant idea! However, I didn’t want to put out a ton of money on this at the moment. Fast forward a couple of weeks and our contractor offered to take them with him on his vacation to his in-laws and clean them up. In the process of him working on all of these we communicated via email. He ended up putting a ton of work into these as they weren’t coming clean with the sandblasting. There was over 7 layers of paint on them so stripper also had to be used as well as a wheel grinder and then sand blasted! I’m sure glad I sent them with him instead of continuing to use the sink method! Anyways, in the end I went with the contractor’s idea of painting them a pipe black in glossy to make the registers look like the old cast iron. They turned out amazing and I couldn’t be happier!

Second subject is light fixtures. Insurance covered the lights so I was able to have a little fun! I purchased a unique brass chandelier on ebay  and a wedding cake chandelier from our local antique dealer. Now here is my dilemma; I’m not sure where to put what light. One has to go in the back entry and the other in the living room. My worry with putting the brass chandelier in the living room is it’ll clash with what we have in the dining room. Any opinions would be great!

Last subject is kitchen hardware. Can any one recommend a place to purchase good quality hardware? I’ve looked at Lowes and Menards and they don’t have what I want. I’m after bin pulls, knobs, and latches. I did place an order from Van Dykes and while the style was what I wanted, the quality was not the best so I sent it back. I’m also debating between two styles of bin pulls so again, comments would be much appreciated!