Ceilings and Lights
I’m finally getting the ceilings in the bedroom and bathroom replastered. They were damaged in 1998, a few months after I moved in, when the then-upstairs neighbor overflowed the bathtub in a bad way. The disintegrating plaster is particularly bad in one place in each room; the hole seems to enlarge each summer, when the heat and humidity causes the plaster to fall in large, powdery pieces once or twice during the season. There’s a few other spots on the ceiling where the plaster is cracked, but these spots seem stable.
It’s actually going to be one of the doormen and his brother that will do the ceiling repair. I was told that the five-year-old leftover paint and plaster that’s in the back of the closet probably won’t be any good anymore. Oh, well, I just had to keep the labels rather than the large buckets. They’re starting the job on December 2, and it’ll take about a week.
I’ve also actually spent money to upgrade some of the fixtures in the apartment, which is a first. The main thing were the track lights that were installed by a previous owner. I finally got tired of replacing the bulbs — they died frequently, even the halogen ones. I “borrowed” a few lighting fixtures from Random Walk’s old 7th Floor (the track lighting fixtures weren’t needed on 16), got dimmable compact florescent lights from EFI, and replaced the old fixtures, which look like they were designed in the 1950s. Badly designed: the interiors were painted dark gray (or is that the accumulated dust?), which absorbed light rather than throwing it into the room. The CFLs have shiny aluminum reflectors, and their lumen output is rated higher than the 60-watts incandenscents that were there before. The apartment hasn’t been this well-lit since I moved in. The CFLs should last much longer than the incandescents, too.
The next step in the fixture replacements will be to do a similar thing to the track lighting in the kitchen. 75-watt spotlights make it very bright in there, but they’re hot — the olive oil in the cabinets are warm to the touch — and they have track light extenders on them. The Random Walk fixtures aren’t going to really fit, so I have to look at Home Depot or one of the Bowery Street lighting stores for ideas (and them buy them on the Internet. CFLs there, too, if only because of heat issues.
There’s also the additional replacement of the dimmer switches themselves. The CFLs work much better if the dimmers cut out at 20% of full power, since their electronic ballasts don’t work at low currents. I don’t believe the current dimmers have this sort of cut-off. Using the CFLs at low currents may also damage them, or at least reduce their lifespan. Right now, we have to manually figure out where they 20% mark is by judging if the CFLs are flickering. The dimmer switch replacement shouldn’t be that much of an issue. I know where the breakerboard is, and I think I know which breakers correspond to the ceiling lights. Fortunately, these breakers aren’t the same as for the outlets, so I can have light while working on the switches. I just have to go to Home Depot for new switches. Luckily, we now have a car.