Here's a peek of the finished project. It turn out that to cut crown molding (with a mitered edge), you have to position the piece upside and make the tilt backwards in the miter box or against a miter saw. But we didn't have to worry about that since we used these decorative corner peices on 2 corners of the room. Since we have built in's on the other wall, we can't use them and Eric has to put his geometry skills to test. I'm sure glad that we checked DIY and didn't waste any. Eric's going to borrow a miter saw from a friend just to make sure that the cut it perfect. However, even if the cut is perfect, an unsquare wall could throw off the join...which makes Eric a little nervous. Apparently, you could use a coping saw to cheat so that even an unsquare room would have a perfect join but we tried that technique on a scrap peice and it was too difficult. So, in the 3 hours that we worked on putting the molding up, this is all we have to show for it since we opted to play it safe and wait for the miter saw. The color looks a bit yellow in this pic...it's actually a lot more green.

Paint

Yeah! We finally chose a paint color that works! It's called pale avocado and it is really close to what I had originally had in mind. Eric started on the cabinet doors today. Hopefully we'll be semi moved back in by Monday. We still have to paint and install crown molding and a shoekick but that shouldn't take too long. I'll take a photo tomorrow when the light is better.

Popcorn anyone?

Have you ever wondered what popcorn ceiling would looked like on your floor? Here's an idea.

Checklist

1. Stripped all the woodwork in the room...check.
2. Sanded all the woodwork...check.
3. Removed the popcorn ceiling...check.
4. Removed the ceiling fan independently without electrocuting myself...check. That was scary! The entire fan was hanging by 1/2 of a screw before I realized that the original installer (not us) forwent hooking the fixture into to the ceiling plate!
5. Skim coated the entire ceiling with joint compound...check.
6. Almost committed suicide...check. Seriously that was 11 hours of hell!
7. Sanded the ceiling...check (Eric did most of that).
8. Applied a second skim coat (will this ever end?)...check.
9. Resanded the ceiling (I think that my neck is going to stick this way!)...check.
10. Wiped the entire room down and scrubbed the floors 3X.
10. Primed the ceiling, walls, and trim...check.

So what's holding me up? Paint colors. Being such and indecisive person, this is a grueling process. I wanted green but it turns out that the greens that I chose either look like baby food or baby poop. Neither of which was the look that I was going for. And I didn't realize that what would look like oatmeal on the wall actually looks like mud on the ceiling due to the shadow.

Eric's thoughts: "Just pick something"...thanks. I wish that I could bottle his passion of music and let it leak out once in a while like when I need help with important life decisions like paint color.

I think that I have it narrowed down though. Hopefully, the painting will be done by the weekend.

Next on the "to do" list:
Redesign the built-ins (Eric's job) so that they won't hit the crown molding when the doors swing open.
Install crown molding
Install shoe kick
Make tufted headboard
Make roller blinds and maybe buy curtains
Buy rug
Buy light fixture
Lay on the bed and gaze at the ceiling that almost cost me my life/marriage and as Eric put it: 11 hours that he'll never get back and quite possibly the worst day of his life!

I guess that this trumps the train ride to Burnet, TX and the Saturday that we spent looking for objects that resembled letters for the name art photographs project that I gave as Christmas gifts last year. I wonder what will next top the list.

renovation vacation

I haven't been keeping up with my blogs over the last few months so some of you haven't heard that I got laid off from my job. It's quite a long story but basically the company that I worked for sold their camera to a competitor. I've been laid off since mid May and just this Friday I got a job offer to work at a new start-up hospital that will be opening in October. I'll start in September so I'll have another 6 weeks or so to just kick it at the pool.

In my time off thus far, I've studied and passed a specialty exam in the field of cardiology within the field of nuclear medicine in hopes to make myself more marketable. I also began renovating our bedroom by stripping down all the trim-work to it's bare wood and Eric helped this weekend by sanding it all down for me. We plan to put a nice fresh coat of white paint on it and add some crown molding as well. If your wondering why we stripped it down to only repaint it, it's because it's an oil based lead paint that was painted over varnish and it had a lot of cracks and stuff. We think that we're going to paint the walls a pea soup/asparagus green color (sounds a bit crazy but I think that it'll look nice against the white trim) and eventually reface all of the built-in's (they're not original) and replace the light fixture. I hope to get most of this done before heading back to work. I love renovating but it's so darn hard to find the motivation to do it and work 40+hrs a week so I plan to make the best out of this little hiatus and try not to get too comfortable sleeping in until 9:00 every morning and relaxing by the pool because I can't possibly "work" the whole day, right? I gotta enjoy this time off. Anyway, here are some "during" pictures.




Also, here's a pic of the table that Eric and I redid. I grew up with this table and I really wanted to keep it in the family but I managed to "bung" it up over the last six years. I decided that it needed a new lease on life. However, I had a little issue when sanding...apparently the inside of the tabletop is not solid wood (to me and my parent's surprise) so when I was sanding it, I exposed the laminate. So instead of just dealing with a slight imperfection on the table top, I opted to dig out the entire laminate insert (I recruited Eric for his muscle) and then we laid slate tile in the center. We really like it and since I've been cooking a lot more recently, we get a lot of use out of it as well! Power tools are fun!