Exterior holiday lights are as a part of the season as the Christmas tree, but did you know the history of the holiday lights we all know and love?

In 1882 the modern Christmas light was invented by Edward H. Johnson, inventor and vice president of Thomas Edison’s booming electric company, lit up his New York City home off Fifth Avenue with a string of 80 colorful lights.

Johnsons displays were so popular that patents for electric Christmas lights were starting to appear on the books in 1890. Magazines such as the New York Post and Scientific American began running advertisements for the rental of stringed Christmas lights in 1899 and 1900, and department stores began using electrically lit trees as window displays around 1901. But at a cost of roughly $2,000 in today’s currency, these lights were for the very wealthy.

These electric lights, were not only expensive, but a fire hazard as well. Throughout the 20^th century electric lights became safer and much more affordable. In the second half of the century light displays became more elaborate. Neighbors tried to outdo each other in creating the most outlandish displays.

Computer-controlled lighting took off in the 1990s, including a fully programmable lighting system patented in 1995. Newer inventions use software and wireless networks to create elaborate lighting displays that change based on the music pumped through the system.

The next biggest improvement to the exterior holiday lights is the LED. The LED lights are clearly the future of holiday lighting, in part due to their robust design (they’re completely encased in plastic) but also because of their efficiency consuming much less electricity than their incandescent counterparts.

If you are interested in continuing a tradition over 130 years in the making, but don’t have the time to install Christmas lights, contact Outdoor Lighting Perspective. Our holiday light set up and breakdown can give you all the Christmas spirit without the hassle.

DIY home renovation projects are not only teach you how to work your way around power tools, we are also getting some serious lessons in marriage. This weekend we hit our first mini renovation disaster.

In my account, getting the walls up should have taken a week…at the most 2 weekends. 3 weeks later and we finished up the last of the plastering this weekend, but Walter did a flawless job, so I guess there is a price for perfection. I’m not going to say mistakes weren’t made during this phase of the project. We neglected to cover the furniture in the room where Walter did most of the cutting. Now the place is so dusty, I’m just waiting for Miss Havashim to appear from somewhere in the shadows.

I could bask in my glorious rightness as it was I who suggested we cover the furniture, but I am just as culpable in this mess as my husband. I didn’t lift a finger during this phase and I could have covered the furniture myself, but didn’t.

We forgot about 50/50. I organized and cleaned the whole upstairs before we started with Walter on the assist. During construction parts Walter takes the lead and I assist. I’ll probably take lead on painting tomorrow, mostly because I like being the lead on things.  I’m a big picture person and often get lost in the details, whereas Walter is keen on the details, but bigger stuff can get thrown by the wayside. We need to work together to get the balance, picking up each other’s slack. Bitching about the slack isn’t going to help anyone.

As much as I love being right, I have to learn to suck in my disappointment and anger when things go wrong, especially when I am also partly to blame. This is the first time either of us are undertaking a project of this magnitude, mistakes will be made.

I am still cleaning dust from parts of me I didn’t even know dust could settle and I can’t help but laugh (because if I didn’t, I’d cry). This won’t be the first blunder in this journey and there will be plenty of times to have screaming matches over whose fault it is something didn’t go right (most likely it will happen in Home Depot).  I’m glad we took this first blunder in stride, turning to humor and Mad Max quotes to get us through the day.

Today I start as lead on priming and painting, here’s to hoping we are done before Game of Thrones season finale. (Greg has been hounding us for the HBOGO Pasword)

After two weeks of Eternal Cons and Pirate Festivals we finally got back to work and finished plastering. Walter installed the floors and fixed the pipes so the hot water flows right.

I wanted to tile all around the window but it looks like that we aren’t going to be able to do that.

Tomorrow we clean up the giant mess in the spare bedroom and prime and paint.

This phase was supposed to be done already!

Got some of the drywall up and we got the tile early because it was on sale at Home Depot It’s coming along slower than I hoped. According to HGTV we should have been practically finished by the 2nd commercial break!

Picking out the bathroom tile was a nightmare. I dragged four tile samples and six paint samples over to where the bathroom vanities were and sat there for forty-five minutes pulling my hair out unable to make a decision. When all was said and done I went with the original black and white octagon design from Pinterest.  I need to remind myself that my first choice is always the best choice and to not wrack my brain with options the second I get to the store. Although I feel this will be a running theme throughout this project.

On Greg’s insistence in order to consecrate the bathroom properly we had to make three ritualistic goat sacrifices. We made sure the goats were organic, Greg said it didn’t matter, but it mattered to me. After draining their blood Walter double wrapped the bodies in plastic and set them in the wall behind the hardie board and insulation to protect from mold. As a sufferer of allergies and asthma mold is my biggest fear.

As another way to prevent mold we will be using hardie board in the shower. This is just drywall with concrete mixed in. There was some mold damage by the window, but the rest of the walls were good. The interior beams are solid oak and pretty sturdy, pulling the nails out during demo was quite the workout!

Walter set out the tile so I  could get an idea of how it will look. I’m starting to get excited.

I admit I was a little unsure about doing this on our own, but I think we are getting the hang of things!

We worked out a deal with Walter’s parents to buy the house after his mother retires. I’m having some second thoughts. Can we really make this work? Is it worth it? God I hate this neighborhood, there’s no charm, no quaintness. The thing is, Walter and I can’t afford things like quaint and charm, we have to make it ourselves.

I made my peace with Phil and we agreed on no exorcisms as long as he behaves and he gets some input on how we design the house.

Getting my mother-in-law to agree to a total overhaul of the kitchen and downstairs bathroom before she moves, will be a much more difficult process.

We decide to work on our upstairs living area first:

• Gut reno of the bathroom, new walls, floor, shower tile, vanity, toilet…the works.
• Install laminate flooring on top of ugly linoleum floors.
• Patch walls in both bedrooms paint and get new furniture.

First of all, I want to say I was adamant about NEVER buying my in-laws house for a good 8 and a half years. It had everything I hated in a home and nothing that was on my dream list. Not only did it have an oppressive and malevolent demonic presence (whom I have named Greg), the house hadn’t seen any major updates in half a century! I have often stated that I would rather live in a cardboard box than ever move back into that house, even if it was temporary. My husband took this with a casual smugness as if he’d always known I’d cave.

To my husband this home is his legacy. His grandfather freshly home from WWII came out to the boonies of Ronkonkoma (which was then the last stop on the LIRR and LIE) to build a house and start a family. For my husband it had always been a multi-generational family home living with great-uncles and grandparents most of his life. When we first stayed here from 2007-2010 his maternal grandmother Nanny lived with us. A nice, yet salty old woman whom our Shiba Inu, Roxy, loved dearly. She passed shortly after we moved back in to start our house hunt in 2014.

I NEVER liked this house. Though I was grateful when we moved out of the dark, dank basement and into the two bedroom upstairs in the Summer of 2008, the dark blue linoleum floors and tiny pastel bathroom left much for me to want in an apartment. We fashioned a make shift kitchenette and living room and a modest bedroom. Not bad for two kids in college trying to make it work.

Still it was far from my dream home.

When we returned back to save up money to buy a house, Walter and I did our best to make the space more “us”, but I still felt as if I was living out of suitcases (Greg did everything he could to make me feel unwelcome. We ended up painting the walls red so he’d stop making them bleed every other night.)  This wasn’t MY dream home. MY dream home is an old Victorian or a farmhouse with history and possibly haunted by friendly and playful ghosts not grouchy, territorial demons.

We tried house hunting for a whole year and found two homes that were seemingly perfect, but those fell through. The whole process of searching for a house, finding one you are in love with and being told you can’t have it, is grating.

During a stint in the hospital for Lupus related kidney issues, I was stuck watching hours of HGTV house flipping shows. It was then that I saw the potential that Walter’s family’s house had. His parents are planning to move to Florida in about two years. We will buy the house for a very reasonable price and then use the equity to do a few major renovations.

So here I am, where I swore I’d never be at this house in Ronkonkoma, living  with my in laws (temporarily), my husband and a dark, demonic presence named Greg. Will I be able to turn this heap into the house of my dreams?