Bookcases!

We're making progress, at least in small ways! Soon after we moved in, we repainted the living/dining room since it was egg-yolk yellow. Now it's a light blue shade. We also had a master plan for that room that involved adding lights and built-in bookcases to the living room end of the room, but that part has taken a little more time considering it involved skilled labor that neither Craig nor I had.

We decided to go with the contractor our neighbors used recently for their kitchen renovation, and it was a test to see if we wanted to work with them for our kitchen too (which they failed, though they don't know that yet). About two weeks passed the scheduled install date, the four can lights were installed, and about two weeks after that, the bookcases finally were installed.

We're happy with how they turned out, especially since the boxes of books have finally been put away, after three months of sitting on the floor. We also added crown molding to the room (the first room of many) to dress it up a little. 

We're still waiting on some touch-up work, hardware installation (like the latch below), and a new light switch, but if I waited for that, the pictures might not ever make it to the blog.

The contractor is supposed to be installing two bookcases in the first-floor bedroom too. Hopefully I'll get to share pictures of them soon too!

Our Nest

Last week on a flight, I was reading Fortune magazine, and Tony Fadell, former VP at Apple and the founder of Nest, was profiled in an article on entrepreneurship. Turns out a few weeks ago, we jumped on the bandwagon Tony's leading now and bought a Nest for our house. I felt like a trendsetter!

The Nest is a thermostat, but it's no ordinary thermostat - it's wifi-enabled and looks like an iPod strapped to the wall. Yes, we now have a "wired" home thanks to our Nest thermostat. We (and by that I mean Craig) removed the old programmable thermostat that was set to permanent override mode and connected the Nest. Our house still has what appears to be the original thermostat (both shown below), so we now have the two dials co-existing on the wall, though the old one is merely for decoration now.

 We saw the Nest at Lowe's during one of our many trips there recently but decided to make it official after seeing one functioning in our neighbor's house (our neighbors have also spent a fair amount of time in Silicon Valley and couldn't help themselves). The display screens (below) show up on our iPhones and we can adjust the temperature from our phones, though we rarely need to since it learned our desired settings. It also shows us the number of hours a day that the furnace is running and includes a green leaf if that day was below average, or for days with high usage, it points out if it's due to a lower outside temperature. Yes, we are dorks but it's the coolest home gadget yet.