Plowing through

Here comes the weekend download!

Saturday: We'd designed kitchen trim similar to what we put on our bedroom ceiling, so we had measurements and coffee for breakfast and then sped off in the truck to the building supply place, for trim wood and sundries. John got to climb a very big ladder in the warehouse.

Back at home, we marched right through the now-very-familiar process of making two more ceiling panels. No big troubles anymore. I'm glad to be done with this project—I for one was well over the interest of figuring out a new task and edging toward slight boredom with the routine…



…Lucky for me, this is the January Challenge! So we allowed ourselves less than 5 minutes of admiring our now-complete living room ceiling (meaning all the ceilings downstairs are totally installed—dude!) before plowing onward to the kitchen ceiling.







Faithful readers will recall that we installed this thing around Thanksgiving, but left it primed and untrimmed. Now we're ready to pounce on it as soon as the drywall guy finishes his work (and when I say pounce, I'm not exaggerating. He's practically begging us to let the mud dry before we put trim and primer over it.)

Again—this happens a lot more often than it used to—this is something we know how to do. The kitchen does have some odd shapes in it that challenged us. We got to work measuring and making a big numbered list of all the trim pieces to complete the room. During this process we discovered that where the ceiling dips kinda severely where it meets the front wall—must be a low rafter—and so if we tried putting the stiff 1x4 trim we planned on there, it would leave gaps that an elephant could sleep in. Changed the plan to more flexible quarter-round instead for that particular spot. It won't look too weird.

We brought the miter saw up into the dining room and proceeded to turn our living space into a good approximation of a woodshop. Went down the big list to cut all the pieces, then routed and planed the edges for style. Sawdust in deep drifts on the floor and covering our long-suffering houseplants. Then we set up our ironing board and workbench, laid out all the trim pieces, and primed them. Swept up. Made burritos.







Sunday: We worshipped at the altar of the roller: a thick white coat of ceiling paint in the kitchen. Then a top coat on the trim. We also sized up two upcoming projects: the attic hatch and the porch repair. The drywall man came over and did some more sanding and mudding. After he left we nailed up as much of the trim as we could, but we'll have to wait on most of it until he's done.




It was 6:30, and although it seemed like a stopping point, our now almost yearlong habits of working like crazy until 9:30pm were just too strong to deny. We started eyeing that funny replacement window we put in the kitchen last fall. Could we whip out some trim for that puppy? Uh-huh. And we did. Needs one more piece to be finished, then some coats of paint.

Finish work is its own special addiction.

Often heard in our house these days: "We are SO CLOSE…"

- Erika