In June I visited here:

and since February, I’ve been training to do one of these:

with some of this

<– in the middle.

My first tri was successfully finished a week ago today, although now I’ve done all this training, I’m planning to do 4-5 more races this summer, a mix of tri’s, open water swims, and road races.

All in all, I haven’t had much time for house projects.  Nonetheless, I did (finally) get around to finishing the cork wreath…  Ta da!

I’m pretty pleased with how it came out, although I didn’t anticipate that it would be so close to the color of the brick.

From any distance at all, it really kind of blends in with the brick facade of the house.  I bought some teal ribbon, and am considering a bow for it, just to see if that would help it stand out at all.

I don’t know about the ribbon… we’ll have to see.

In any event, I’m happy to have the project done, off the table, and onto the wall!

Also?

Dahlias are pretty.  Just sharing. 

Our foyer has a serious case of the blah’s.  The flooring is blah, the walls are blah, and the carpet on the stairs (and the flimsy newel posts and banister) aspire to blah, but fall short.  We’ve already upgraded the light fixture, but the space still needs a little more attention.

So, I’d like to install crown molding in the foyer to match the adjacent living room, and a chair rail in the foyer space and running up the stairs.

A lot of people have told me that, since the (necessary to keep) banister runs up the wall, that a chair rail alongside it is a bad idea.  And I get it, really I do.  It may not visually add much up the stairs, and runs the risk of looking a little odd.  But I think I want to do it anyway for a couple of reasons.

1.  It’s really difficult to paint the staircase wall, floor to 2nd story ceiling.  Adding a chair rail will give us an artificial line on the wall that will allow us to put a new coat of paint on the most abused portion of the wall (by the dog, by luggage, by kids’ hands) as needed without having to break out the ladders and paint boards.

2.  I think the foyer would look much better with a chair rail… and if you don’t go up the stairs, where/how do you stop the chair rail on the wall that you see through the living room without it looking choppy and unfinished?  I don’t have a good answer.

So I think we’re going to go ahead with it.

We’ve already bought and cut the crown molding pieces (which were less controversial), and I’m pretty sure I want to do the chair rail too.  I think a little white paint on the molding, and a little contrasting color below the chair rail will give that space a little help.

Plus, I hunted out a few inspiration photos on the web, and really don’t think it’ll be bad to have both a banister and a chair rail on the wall.  We are, at a minimum, not the first to have done it:

Examples by Treehouse Woodworking

Initially I was thinking of using the leftover paint from our bedroom for below the chair rail, because we have half a gallon or so, and I really like the color:

But I think I might like something just a little more gray, and with just a little more contrast:

The banister itself might find itself painted… black?  I’m afraid a white banister would be a handprint disaster.

In any event, it may be a while until we get around to the project, so I have time to decide.

For a while, I’ve been trying to think of a spring/summer/fall idea to take the place of the winter wreath I make every year from the bottom boughs of our Christmas tree.  It fills the space on the front porch so nicely, and since it’s covered by a roof, I have some options that will withstand being outside.

Since wine is pretty popular here at Guin’s Yard (we may or may not have had our wedding reception at a winery four years ago), I decided I’d try a wine cork wreath like the one here.

So I gathered up my corks, my hot glue, my straw wreath base, and my bottle glass of wine, and gave it a whirl:

(I’m not sure whether I’m more proud or embarrassed that I didn’t buy any of the corks; they’re all ours.  Well, I guess I did buy them.  In bottles…)

Unfortunately, I got maybe 2/3 of the way around the wreath and ran out.  Woe!  I guess I’ll have to drink more wine.  For now the project is stashed in a big shopping bag until my cork reserves bounce back (memo to friends & family:  donations gladly accepted!).  I’m pretty pleased with how it’s coming along so far though.  Hopefully it won’t be too long until I have finished photos to share.

Photo circa August 2010

has been on The List for some time now.  My biggest grievance is that it was mounted as if it was a standard light fixture, i.e., with completely insufficient support for a ~60 inch dia. ceiling fan.  We couldn’t turn the fan on even if we wanted to, because it wobbled precariously.   Not to mention, we don’t really want to fling dust around the cooking area.

Push came to shove, as many things do around here, when something broke.  This time, it was a light bulb (for the second time) — the glass broke off of the metal bulb socket, leaving the metal screwed into the light fixture.  This happened before, but this time we couldn’t get it out (even with turning off the circuit and using needle nose pliers).  Since there wasn’t any love lost on the light fixture, we started shopping, and it came down.

Gross.

Cute!

We gave consideration to canister lights, but decided against them because we plan, someday, to redo the kitchen, layout included.  Canisters are a lot of work if you’re not sure you know where you’ll want them long term.

We also looked at some of the beautiful fixtures at Hubbardton Forge.  But those are pricey, and again, a lot about our kitchen is done with the “this’ll be nice for the next 5-10 years” mindset.  So off we went to Lowe’s to see what they had.

After some wandering, and some debating, we brought home this Allen + Roth fixture.  It was significantly less expensive than other options we were considering, and with 3 CFL bulbs, we figured it would make a nice, bright work space.

Not bad!

The CFL bulbs do take a minute to warm up when you turn it on, so at night it takes a minute to get up to its full brightness.  Admittedly, not my favorite feature.  But it coordinates pretty well with the existing hardware and fixtures, including the light over the table, and definitely does the job.  We still need to do just a little patching in the ceiling, since the cutout is a smidge too big, but that’s just minor cosmetic work.

We had one of those moments this weekend, but it was somewhat unavoidable.  Our microwave died last week — no sparks, nothing spectacular — just dropped dead in the middle of warming up a cup of coffee.  The lights went out, and no one was home.  It’s 10 years old, and has been tripping the kitchen electrical circuit (we think) for a while, so it was time for it to go.

We’ve been at 50/50 on appliance finishes for about 2 years now:  a stainless steel fridge and dishwasher, and the bisque range and microwave that came with the house.

We have only been buying appliances on an as-needed basis, since it seems silly to buy new ones just because I’d prefer stainless steel.  Two and two was really not bad anyway.  I always sort of imagined that the range would eventually go (we’ve been running at 3 burners’ capacity for a while), and when we bought a replacement, we’d just do a matching (smaller-ticket item) microwave to round out the stainless steel.  The power of positive thinking failed me, though, and the microwave died first.  So here we are.  Shopping for a microwave.

Microwaves are really hard to get excited about.  Even the things you make in them aren’t all that exciting.  They warm up your leftovers and your coffee, pop the occasional bag of kettle corn, and that’s really a day in the life.  So we weren’t looking for bells & whistles.  We wound up with this fairly basic GE Profile model.  It works pretty much just like the old one, except the buttons are huge – it’s like the geriatric large print edition.  Not the worst thing for a device sometimes used to warm up coffee in the morning…

Anyway, we lugged it home and then the fun started.  It’s a lot easier to get one of these down if you’ve seen what’s back there once before!  So since I’m a sharer, this is what the bracket behind one of these bad boys looks like:

Four little up-turned brackets on the bottom that the back of the microwave rests on, and two bolts that go up into the cabinet above.  To the extent that you can see the screws on the bottom horizontal piece, that’s where the studs are.

We were almost lucky enough to use the old bracket, but it was rectangular rather than U-shaped, and got in the way of the exhaust vent.  We had to enlarge the cutout in the wall to accommodate it as well.

After a little wrangling, here we are:

This is the point where I question whether it’s an “improvement.”

It works, so of course it is, but this is not an awesome angle.

Even after I killed our bottle of Windex on the range, the microwave just looks so shiny next to it.

I keep telling myself to back up:  the new microwave does go well with the other appliances (which are not GE, but Kitchen Aid — the handles match so nicely though!)

Eventually we’ll buy a range to match, and the whole kitchen will coordinate.  Now that will be an exciting appliance purchase.  For now, though, we’ll just go back to enjoying our microwave kettle corn!

It’s very exciting.

Also exciting:

Daffodils.  Happy first day of spring!  I can’t wait til we see these outside, and not just ACS’ Daffodil Days!

In any event, I always thought it was sort of funny when real estate listings included “crown molding” in the same list of bullet points as… central air, dishwasher, attached garage, wood burning fireplace, that sort of thing.  It’s just a piece of oak, pine, composite, or whatever, right?

I think I get it now.

The first order of business was getting them home.

We bought 16 foot lengths, so that only two of the walls would need joints (the long living room walls are 18′ and change).  They rode home plastic wrapped together in a bundle and strapped to the Forester roof racks, overhanging the car on both ends.  More than the usual amount of luck was involved in getting them home in one piece.

Instead of doing mitered corners, one end of each piece was coped and filed to lay against the piece that would be behind it.  This is clearly above and beyond what I’d have been able to do, but we had woodworking assistance in for the weekend (thanks dad!) and with that, (almost) all things are possible.

Blue painter’s tape marked the studs to place the nails:

We also used Liquid Nails on the edge along the walls, so that we’d be sure that the house could someday fall down, but the rectangles of crown molding would remain.

Much to their chagrin, Chip & Guinness weren’t invited to the crown molding installation party.

Next up came the caulking:  Sherwin Williams’ Sher-Max for the lifetime guarantee.  Cracking caulk on molding is no fun later.

From a distance, it looks pretty great!  Up close too, although the need for paint over the primer becomes a little more obvious:

Then it was onward to repeat in the living room.  There were a few challenges there that made it more difficult than the dining room.  The walls weren’t quite as true, opposite ends of the room were 2″ off of being symmetrical, and with 18′ walls, we had two joints to do.  The wall over the bay window was a little bowed, too, so everything took a few more hands.By Sunday morning, it all came together, and we had all 8 walls done.  Once they’re painted, the joints should fade away quite nicely.

The biscuit joiner may or may not have been overkill, but that joint is going no place.

Next up, and firmly planted in the back 75% of the weekend, was painting.  Whew, finally!  First with ceiling white over the caulk and upper edge of the molding and ceiling, then our trim color of choice, SW Alabaster in semi-gloss, over the trim (and down the wall a little).  I’ll touch up the Sea Salt color once the trim is done.

There are more layers of painting here than I really planned on, but this way we know that no caulk will peek out between edges of paint.  We’ll (I’ll) continue painting throughout the week.

We also cut some of the trim pieces for the future crown molding in the foyer.  Guinness isn’t entirely sure about this prospect:

But with a chair rail to go with it in the foyer and up the stairs, it’ll look great.

As the last few years have gone by, though, my satisfaction waned with the situation.  I really wanted a bed.  A real bed.  With a headboard to lean against to read, and a footboard to keep the comforter off the floor (and ahem, out from under Guinness’ lounging furry self).

I tried really hard to convince myself not to give in, to wait until we were ready to buy an actual bedroom set.  It’s inefficient to bring in an imperfect piece of furniture only to replace in a few years.  But the last couple years since we’ve been in this house has made clear that we aren’t getting much closer to shopping for that bedroom set.  New priorities – house related, and non-house related – keep cropping up.  And that nagging want for a real bed remained.

So, after months of trolling Craig’s List, and a few listings that I lost out on to someone faster, this weekend we found, saw, and bought a bed frame!

Ta-da!

Obviously, the picture needs to be moved higher — just waiting to do that until we know for sure that we don’t want to move the bed left/right a little.

I’d been looking for a slatted mission/shaker style bed, preferably with an arched head- and footboard.  Those don’t seem to come up very often.  I saw this one, though, the price was right, and it was awfully close to the target.

After we got it all set up, I was really glad we did it.  It is delightful to have side rails that take the place of a bed skirt.  What with sharing a bedroom with this character:

ease of vacuuming is a big plus.  The too-long bedskirt that we’ve used for the last few years was not a win on that count; it needed to be hoisted up to vacuum under.  Plus, it just looked sloppy and too big.   It just wasn’t working for me.  The footboard keeps the comforter from slipping off the foot of the bed and becoming a de facto dog bed, and the headboard keeps the pillows from doing the same thing at the head.  Reading in bed is a lot more comfortable, too.

There were a few things that surprised me, though.

- the headboard is really tall!

- it’s a lot bigger than the bare metal frame was.  There’s less room to walk around, even though it’s exactly the same mattress & box spring we’ve always had.  I was not anticipating that.

- we’ll need even tinier night stands than I’d expected as a result.

All in all, though, a very exciting second hand purchase!  Another score for Craig’s List.

…neither of which matched each other or in here:

especially post re-decoration.  We also had two smaller maple dining chairs without any seat coverings.

I bought fabric to redo the chairs back when we were picking out paint and curtains, and finally got around to recovering them for the holidays.  The figure-8 chairs were fine with just a fabric swap.  The other 3 needed a little more work in addition to the new fabric:  they needed new foam padding, a few wood repairs, and a paint job to hide the repairs.

The sanding, repairing, sanding, priming, and painting went smoothly enough.  It was just a huge time sink.  I used adhesion primer and satin finish enamel, and did it with a brush for corners, and a 2″ foam roller for straight pieces.  Each coat took about an hour per chair.

For the seats, rather than upholstery tacks, we stapled the material to the underside of the seats.  We ended up needing to go with smaller sized staples (smaller gauge and shorter) to get them sunken in far enough, but it wasn’t hard.  Having 2 people helped too – one to stretch the new material over the padding and seat, the other to staple it down.  You want it to be as tight as possible to avoid creases when people sit on it later.

The end result was pretty exciting:  something I could allege in vague terms looks like a “set” of 7 chairs!

Whee!  And I didn’t actually buy any of them!  Awesome.

I confess I cheated, and only got to one coat of black satin finish enamel before the holidays.  The chairs had to be pressed into service, so I put them back together as they were.  I’ll need to take them apart for a 2nd coat after the holidays.  I discovered that I would’ve needed to do it anyway, though, because I think I need to do a coat or two of polyurethane over the paint.  There were a couple spots where the black paint left marks on my newly painted white chair rail and molding, so I obviously need to add a protective coat to keep that from being an ongoing issue.

All in all, though, it was one of those “why didn’t I do this sooner?” kinds of projects.  Pretty good bang for the buck (and the effort!).

Wreath and swags made from balsam and frasier fir boughs, from our Christmas tree and those of a friend’s tree that we picked up when we went tree hunting.

…and best wishes for a wonderful 2011!