In Which A Medallion is Placed and a Drywall Patch is Butchered

A Tale of Procrastination

One of the first things I changed when we bought the house were light fixtures in the downstairs bathroom and at the top of the stairs. The bathroom replacement was necessitated by the bulb holder disintegrating on me when I tried to replace the lightbulbs. The light at the top of the stairs, on the other hand, had to go mostly because I just didn't like it. Mostly, it was because the flush mounted dome just didn't throw enough light to make getting things out of the newly repaired hallway built-in closet pleasant. That darkness was also annoying when we were scraping the floors in the hallway and on the landing. I also just don't like dome lights. The wife had no opinions other than "all lighting is ugly,"  so I found what I felt was a period appropriate-ish fixture off of amazon and went ahead and installed it. The crumbling knob and tube wiring and sketchy plastered-in electrical box made me a little concerned, but I managed to get the lamp installed without incident (or starting a fire). The old flush dome left a ring where it had been painted around, but I didn't have the time to deal with it so I put it on the list of things to do and forgot about it.

Fast forward to the end of July. While rewatching some This Old House, I remembered about plaster ceiling medallions. More to the point, I remembered about modern foam replacement medallions and decided that's how I was going to cover up the unsightly ring from the old flush dome light. I bought two different styles and settled on the simpler design:

 Fast forward again to December, and the wife finally pokes me enough to paint and install the medallion. I used 3 coats of the trim enamel paint and just used the mounting pressure of the light fixture itself to keep it in place. I don't think it looks too shabby, though the uneven ceiling does bug me a bit.
 

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Drywall Butchery

When the electrician cut into the wall under the electrical box, he did his best to make clean cuts and saved all the drywall pieces. That wall is actually built up from a layer of 1/2" under another layer of 3/8" so there were a bunch of pieces. I had been meaning to do something about it, but I really didn't want to do any drywall work and had out it off for as long as I could. Come December, I finally had to get off my butt and do something about it. I had planned on building another false cabinet to match the cabinet build around the electrical panel, but after some thought, I decided it probably wasn't going to look right without some drywall work anyway. I went out and bought the required drywall compound, tape, and texture, then I proceeded to butcher the patch beyond repair. Seriously, it looks so bad. It's so bad i don't want to put up a picture. The only thing good about it is that we had matching paint and were able to touch up the last paint job (which was very poorly done) while painting the patch. Every time I walk by the hallway I am reminded just how awful I am at drywall repair.