Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Race to the (almost) finish

For various reasons, we need to have the house looking somewhat ship-shape by Friday. Essentially, we need to get the furniture and boxes of books (and boxes, and boxes of books) out of the dining room so the house looks like a house not a junk shop.

To that end, we've been keeping up breakneck pace on the study project. Ken was quite a motivator at the start, and now it's my turn (for example, "let's just do one more thing tonight, then we can take a break" or "I'll just get up 10 minutes early and put that last coat of stain on that piece of trim".)

It's working - last night Ken put up the strapping for the ceiling, and I coped all the 1/4 round for the baseboard. Wait, back up - both of those things have a backstory.


1. Quarter round: the room didn't have any, due to the generous use of paneling. We figured we'd buy some fir lumber and work our router magic, making a new bunch of it. Then, we started ripping out the extraneous shoe moulding and trim in the closet, and as I pulled out a long, un-painted, un-stained piece, I realized - ummm, this is the original fir moulding! They must have had a stash of "extras" and thrown it in the closet. There was plenty to do the whole room - and no paint stripping needed! The grain is way superior to new fir - so this was perhaps the best score ever. I forgot to take a picture. Maybe tonight.

2. Ceiling: the room had those horrible paper tiles. Why do I detest them so much? Must be my black soul. Anyways, those are gone, and we can't go back to plaster ($ and time constraints - the ceiling is trashed from a very old water leak we think happened pre-1960). We have a bunch of tin ceiling we got from salvage of an old department store, and have used it in the mudroom, half bath, and now study (the study is part of the same back, un-dormered section of the house as those 2 rooms, so it makes sense to continue the same ceiling treatment. However, we can't paint it white - it would totally not work in the study. So - we're being bold - my kooky design choice is to paint it brass. Apparently they used to use a hint of sparkle on ceilings because the old light bulbs were so dim. So, bling it is. We'll see how it works. It'll either be totally awesome or heinously tacky.

Tonight we will put up the rest of the ceiling panels and move some furniture back in. Unbelievable. After this room, we're going on hiatus for a while. I need time to regenerate several layers of skin on my hands to grow out all the splinters.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are bold and adventurous - brava, Sarah and Ken, bra-va.

Just A Girl And Her Craftsman Bungalow said...

score on the extra wood!
Goodbye ceiling tiles. I think we had the same previous PRO's because I have ceiling tiles in both bedrooms and some of them are starting to look like they are going to come down.

Anonymous said...

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Jennifer said...

I think it's going to look great! Fingers crossed for you.

Scarlett Hodge said...

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