House Made

Beth here.

Over the break between Christmas and New Year’s, Merideth and I put in the picture rail in both bedrooms. I also took the opportunity to paint the rooms. The picture rails went up in no time at all. And normally, painting is a task that takes one or two days. For me, it took five for each room. (In my defense, there could be almost no taping because the plaster is so wonky on the edges where it meets the old trim, many of the lines have to be creatively applied. In not-so-much my defense, I tend to be overly weird about having perfect lines.)

Just by looking at the walls, we could see that there used to be picture rails there, so it was easy to figure out where to put them. This is the master bedroom. We found that the picture rail doesn’t make the room look bigger or smaller, as previously hoped-for and feared, but it does make the room look righter. We decided not to use the picture rail as it was strictly intended (y’know, to hang pictures), but I do like the architectural feature it adds to both rooms.

This is the guest room. While painting, I considered putting on purposeful gloppy drips on the new picture rail in order to make them match the rest of the room, but just couldn’t make myself do it. I guess everyone will just have to know by the lack of caked-up paint that the picture rails are not the originals.

the tree of 2007


dixie’s new xmas collar

Our decorations look almost exactly as they did last year with the exception of the tree which is a Noble Fir this year. If you’d like a refresher, look here.

Also, Dixie got a  new Christmas collar for those days when her xmas sweater is just too warm.

Merry Christmas!

dining room

Well at least that’s how we feel about it. In fact, when we’re both home, about every 7 minutes or so one of us will yell to the other “I freakin’ LOVE the dining room!” It’s one of those things that has turned out pretty much exactly the way we dreamed it might if all the planets aligned and the yard sprouted 4-leaf clovers, and no one got jury duty.

Up close the paneling and plate rail look like they’ve always been there. The paint color is just dreamy and really does look like a Weimaraner. (Good job with the paint naming there Benjamin Moore.) It’s all way more interesting than the original plain white box approach bequeathed to us by the previous owners.

It looks a little under-decorated yet because we’re planning to treat the room kind of like a gallery. We’ll use the plate rail to show artwork and photography above the paneling. We plan to build cabinet doors for the built-in that sits under the window but that may wait a bit as we’re frankly thrilled to not have any tools or construction projects going on in there right now.

And now, as promised, from before to after: photos. Go nuts.

Yes well, we’ve been on vacation. Lovely, relaxing, non-working vacation. How relaxing? Oh, just hot-tub-every-day, pool, creekside, gourmet-food, TWO-MASSAGES relaxing. That’s how relaxing. But now we are back.

Oh yeah, and we had to stop being productive briefly to read the new Harry Potter. Because, come on. HARRY POTTER. Oh, and Beth read the thing start to finish in seven hours, stopping only briefly to eat. She’s a machine! It took me a few days because I like to relish my fantasy-novel finale and this slow pace drove her crazy.

But I digress. So things are getting back to normal and that means back to productive! Hopefully we’ll finish up the paneling in the dining room this weekend and then I–because I, like everyone else, love photos–will post a slew of pictures. More pictures than you want. A freakin’ Richard Scarry book worth of pictures.

dining room wainscot part1

Nothing says “Independence Day” like a hootenanny in the dining room! The barn theme we have going now was purely accidental, but we figured we could make the best of it by shooting school dance photos in front of the panelling. Look for our xmas card this year! Now where did we put the dried corn stalks?

So we were tornadoes of productivity this weekend. We got the panels, trim, and plate rail installed. I cut everything but the panels from poplar, then routed a groove in the top of the plate rail, and sanded everything to a comfortable finish. We’d already ripped the thickness of the stiles down to about 5/8″ so that the proportions worked with the baseboards and top trim. All I have left to make are the little brackets that sit below the shelf at the top of each stile. We’re thinking they’ll be simple, squarish blocks.

Those lovely panels you are admiring are 1/4″ mdf which we put up to hide the wall texture and basically back up the illusion that there’s wood there. Added bonus: they’ve been printed to look like real wood so that you can’t even tell they’re FAKE. It’s just so REAL. Of course the whole shebang will be painted white so you’ll never see it.

Beth thinks we should replace the dining room table with hay bales.

Well we hurt ourselves, is what we did. Yes, people. Rotator cuff injuries aren’t just for athletes anymore. We had to put the wiimotes down. Then we thought hey, we have this whole old house thing going. Why don’t we do something with that?

So over the weekend we bought all the lumber we’ll need for the paneling and plate rail in the dining room. Then we proceeded to measure, cut and sand all the stiles and moulding. Not bad, eh?

We also put up six paint swatches, rejected them all, then decided to go a completely different direction that will no doubt require at least six more swatches.

This weekend we’ll get the panels cut, installed, and photo-proof taken. Maybe we’ll get some plaster repair done here and there if we’re lucky.

How ya like them apples, Mr. Fancy Nintendo Machine?!

hallway from bedroom


hallway from dining room

Beth here.

Merideth went to Memphis for a long weekend, and as will happen if left to my own devices, I became obsessed with a project.  This time, I did not rest until the hall between the bedrooms and bathroom was beautiful.

The hall, although only about six feet long, has five (FIVE!) doorways in it (both bedrooms, bathroom, linen closet, dining room).  This meant a lot of cutting in.  A lot.  Like six hours with the brush to get all the trim and doors and ceiling edges coated in primer and paint.  Admittedly, I am ridiculously fastidious about my edges, but c’mon.  SIX HOURS.  The dog and cat declared it to be the most boring weekend ever as they crammed themselves into the hall, wondering why I was staring so intently at the trim edge.  (By the way, both animals have a charming primer stripe somewhere on their bodies, causing them both to be calle Pepe Le Pew.) 

The paint?  Took 20 minutes.  I’m calling the color “Realtor Yellow” as it’s the color we’re seeing all staged houses painted recently, but Benjamin Moore calls it “Windham Cream” (HC-6).

Please take note of the beautiful bathroom seen in the background of the first picture.  You may admire the hallway and bathroom equally.

Potty Eye View. In a bathroom, if anything looks wonky or wrong, you’ll have plenty of time to notice it, dwell on it, and have it drive you crazy when…well…sitting. It is, after all, where you’re likely to spend blocks of time…observing. So we evaluated all the work we did in the bathroom from potty eye view, also known as “potty perspective.”

Whenever we completed a step, one or both of us would take a seat and review the results. How does the caulk look when viewed from the from the main seat? Do you notice that trim joint from the potty? Will you see the crooked wall every time you sit down?

So everything we can see from P.E.V., as far as we are concerned, is perfect .

Never ever say bad things about something that you want to keep working. You know that rule right? Like, you don’t want to say “The car is getting kind of old.” It will hear you. It will rebel by breaking right down in some fantastically-expensive-to-repair way. That’ll show you.

So as far as the house knows, our bathroom is AWESOME. It’s perfect. Absolutely nothing at all needs to change. Its plaster and lathe is lovely. It has the perfect amount of lighting. It does not need one thing. (We have to be particularly careful since we have just the one bathroom. We cannot afford sullen plumbing.) But we did cut the bead-board, pull out the old baseboards, and get moving on the new trim. That should nicely complement the completely unnecessary new lighting and tile restoration.

In other news, we made further progress on the back walls and we came home today to find that the front tree had been given a high and tight by the city. I guess if they’re going to put that kind of work into it they mean to let us keep it. Rah!  Oh, and they fixed the possible leak in our water main.  Double rah!

Only 3 more days til the weekend! The bathroom knows we’re coming.

Beth here.

We’ve always needed more light in the bathroom, and since we’ll be putting up beadboard and a new mirror soon, now was the perfect time to run a new fixture.

As with anything electrical that happens in this house, the fire break was running right in my way, as was another random board, a stud, and a pipe.  But many holes later, a new light fixture is in residence, and the holes will all be covered up.  Or we’ll say that we’re going for a post-deconstruction style or something.  Either way.

Immediately upon having the new light, we decided we didn’t know how we ever lived without it.  Also, some people have some answering to do for letting my eyebrows get so far out of control, when clearly I didn’t know the extent of the damage. 

Maybe it was better to live in the dark.

P.S. by Merideth: Beth chose to celebrate her birthday by doing this project. No, really. When asked what she wanted to do for her special day, this was it. Dedication or insanity? I call it awesomeness. She is the number one MOST awesome chick after all.