Creative Problem Solving

Problem: Giant crack in the sheetrock on the ceiling. HUGE!

Solution: Faux beam. Ta da!

Just kiddin'. We didn't stop there... I watch HGTV. Now we have space separation, transition, and blah blah blah... best of all, no *visible* crack in the ceiling.

Curtains in the making

New Mantel

Mantel old vs. new. What do you think??












More pictures!! Here's one with some vases, the chair, and the dog, for scale. My little vases look sad don't you think? What should I put on top of this mantel?

Here's some close-ups of the moldings we used. Note that this is the same crown molding that would put up on the ceiling and the same baseboard that will go around the whole room.. of course the rest will be painted white...

Living Room Work Continues

For August and I, this whole house renovation process is basically about answering our own questions like:

• "Can we scrape popcorn ceilings?" (yes)
• "Can we install a whole house fan?" (yes)
• "Can we keep a landscaped yard looking nice?" (several things are dying... more on that later...)

So now we're at "Can we install crown molding?". We attempted it once before at my grandparents house. Including my dad, that makes 3 engineers, we didn't even get one junction to work right in several hours. We ended up paying to have it done by professionals. Later we realized that we didn't have the ideal saw, and on top of that, the one we had was broken and also missing a piece. This time we at least had the right tools: fancy Dewalt compound miter saw and angle measure. It still took us about 8 hours just to hang the stuff. Here are some tips we discovered:

- Measure corners, they are probably not square. Divide this angle by two for exterior corners. For interior, divide the measurement by 2 but cut the complementary angle... That's 46 degrees for a 92 degree corner, which we had several of.
- If you are going to have joints in a long stretch, make them near the corners, because its waaaay easier to manuever a smaller section into a corner. Of course, avoid joints if at all possible.
- Try fastening the corner pieces together on the ground, especially if you have wavy walls and out-of-square corners.
- Get a good stud finder and mark those studs before hand. Its hard enough to hold the molding and the nail gun over your head. Don't complicate the issue by trying to find the studs at the last second.
- Choose painted molding. That way you can make some mistakes, caulk and repaint them, and no one will be able to tell the difference. Case in point: Franken-corner. Here's a good shot of him:

We fought this corner for quite some time, as you can see. Definitely the worst of the worst. However, a little caulk, some fresh paint, and voila:


So the moral of the story is: yes, we can install crown molding, provided we can caulk the fool out of it. If you get right up on it, you can of course still see the mistakes, but from regular eye level, it looks flawless. We are majorly indebted to the inventor of caulk.

Let's take a look back at that check list. We are getting there! orange peel ceilings -> paint ceilings -> paint ceilings again? -> 2nd coat of paint on walls -> hang crown molding -> paint bay window -> install recessed lighting -> pull up carpet!! -> install new mantel -> install baseboards and quarterround

Its Been Too Long

Just wanted to give an update on our progress, don't want anyone to think we're slacking off. So, projects:

Wedding - I was gone for most of last week to a wedding. It went well - Hannah and Daniel are officially married! I think Daniel turned out to be taller than anyone was expecting. But, apparently Hannah was still able to reach him during the ceremonial smearing of the wedding cake. Why do people do that any way? Not that I didn't expect Hannah to give it her best.. This sort of thing is right up her alley... :)

Living Room - While I was gone, August put a couple more layers of paint on the ceiling and started the walls in the living room. We went back and forth on this paint color. Its a little boring, maybe more beige than we originally intended. But its grown on me, and I think it will turn out nicely. Our "open floorplan" means the living room color will end up on half the house without some creative intervention. All the walls just flow together.. The ceiling is another story. Its now flat as can be, but little differences in texture show up everywhere. After much debate, we have decide to try to apply a spraycan orange-peel texture. The rest of the ceilings and walls in the house have this, so hopefully it will match well enough. So plan of attack: orange peel ceilings -> paint ceilings -> paint ceilings again? -> 2nd coat of paint on walls -> hang crown molding -> paint bay window -> pull up carpet!! -> install new mantel -> install new floor molding -> DONE!

Kitchen - We are now the proud owners of a used counterdepth stainless steel refrigerator. Its very swanky. Came off craigslist of course. Getting it home was a real adventure. We had planned to avoid the highways on the way home, since we didn't want to go over 30mph or so. But the path I had selected was obviously going right through a rain storm. (RAIN?!?) In Denver, no hills and no trees, you can see for miles... Luckily most all roads here go perfectly N/S or E/W, so we were able to make it home without too much trouble.

The fridge is fabulous. We are working on installing a water line for the ice maker. It is nearly done but not quite. I'm sure we'll be done this afternoon. Running the water line was easy - the hot water heater is directly below the fridge in the basement. Anyways, this picture is our new design inspiration. We'll see how it turns out in the end...

Rain - In addition to the rain storm in Denver, it rained here last night as well. This is the first real rain since late May. Its about dang time.. apparently not unusual for these parts, but sure seems strange to August and I. We are just excited about not having to run the sprinkler system. All the plants look nice and perky this morning.

Couch - I got a sewing machine for my b-day. So now I can finish the couch project. A place to sit - very exciting in this household! I've got miles and miles of welting to make up, and several box pillows to sew, we'll see how that turns out. My own grandmother, a great seamstress in her day, recommended I have an upholsterer do them for me..

Storm Troopers

This weekend we tackled our first cosmetic upgrade in the house - "painting" the living room ceiling. It was a LOT of work. Maybe a little more than we expected. We are still debating about whether we will similarly "paint" the other ceilings or not. Either way, the living/dining room is nice and the kitchen was already nice, so now that whole level is "nice". There are two other levels which aren't as nice...

Here's a picture of us right before we started. In our opinion, you can never be to careful when you're dealing with "paint".

House Renovation Project #1

Okay, the first renovation project happened, like, over a week ago, but we didn't get the internet at home until yesterday... so my blogging was severely hampered.

And now for the before and after shots:














We basically bought a can of "tacky-gold-be-gone" from Lowe's, total cost $5. I think we'll definitely get our investment back when we sell the place.