For queen and country!

How many crown-related titles can I come up with? Not many, apparently - I blame my heathen colonial roots on that. The only crowns we have in this country are the ones that come from the dentist. (Not that I have any of those. Anyway.)

I could blame the long radio silence on a great many things - namely, my lovely baby sister getting weddinged to her equally lovely wife - but to be perfectly honest, I've been avoiding the crown molding because it looks hard. I've probably watched two hours of Youtube videos of distinguished craftsmen earnestly explaining to their patient camera operators how to properly set a miter. I've slowly chopped about eight feet of crown into six-inch sections trying to get it right, but it's a complicated formula of bevel-miter-fence-crown, and while an infinite number of monkeys may eventually bang out the complete works of Shakespeare, this particular monkey doesn't have the finances for an infinite amount of crown. (Even as cheap as it is at my favorite store.)

So...I've been avoiding it. Until tonight, when Incredible Builder Mom sent me a link on Pinterest that is probably the best tutorial I've ever seen in my life. 

 

Source: The ever-fabulous Sawdust Girl. I could kiss her dusty boots right now.

So I followed her directions, and made my own templates:

And once I got the bevel-miter-fence-crown combos ironed out, it was - dare I say - easy. I only stopped tonight once my project manager (aka Jesse) gently pointed out that it was getting late, and we like our neighbors and want them to continue liking us and our noisy pneumatic nailer. 

Yes, there are gaps large enough to drive a truck through, but that's what caulk is for, right? Right. It's part of the, erm, charm of discount trim. Or possible the innate charm of our house. Definitely not the fault of my miter saw Dad's miter saw. 

And yes, the ceiling paint does stop right in the kitchen. That's another project for another paycheck.

 

LOOK AT THAT! It looks like an actual almost-finished house. (And feminism be damned, that horrible boob light has got to go.)

And speaking of looking, I fully recognize that this blog is a vanity project. I am awesome. The things I do are awesome. Occasionally I even finish an awesome thing:

This is the built-in bookshelf in the dining room - painted and done! (Please ignore the monster plant. I rescued it from a dumpster right around the time we moved, but neither it nor I have been happy with any of the places I've put it in so far. It's a work in progress.) There are additional shelves drying in the garage, which hopefully I'll be able to put up tomorrow, provided I remember where all the hardware is. 

 

There is no before. There is only during. 

Construction can be very existential.

  
The bookshelves started out life as laminate IKEA BILLY units. I primed them with Zinsser water-based primer, which is my new favorite thing ever, because I didn't even have to sand the laminate before priming. This stuff adheres like crazy to EVERYTHING.(Including, um, the metal bits of the paintbrush, should one inadvertently allow it to dry. Oops) Once the bookcases were primed, I made a base out of 2x4s to raise them enough so our wide baseboard could comfortably wrap around, anchored the units to studs and added trim, caulked around the edges and painted. 

Yeah, I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out so far.

In related news, I have finished five gallons of paint. This should be a triumphant story, but it's not. After relying almost exclusively on recycled or mismixed paint for my color needs, having to actually buy new white paint was annoying, and also having to pay $80 for a giant tub of Glidden Ceiling and Trim was even more annoying. I was certainly not going to pay twice that for the higher-quality Behr stuff, and the biggest tragedy of all is that Metro has been sold out of their Mountain Snow all freaking summer. It's a problem. The other problem? The coverage. I put four coats of the Glidden on the above bookshelf in the dining room IN ADDITION to the primer, and I swear there are still spots I can see the dark laminate lurking underneath. (I have been informed by my beloved that I may in fact be crazy. We do try to exemplify romance.)

So. It may be time to buy a brand of paint that doesn't suck. I can already feel my bank account crying. My paintbrush hand, however, is crying right now from overuse, so it may in fact be worth it. 

Honey, you should see me in a crown...

This week has been bzzzzzzzy. Not that the others aren't...I'm just feeling more than a little self-imposed pressure. I told myself ages ago that I wanted to at least get the downstairs trim up in time for the deluge of relatives for my lovely sister's wedding...which is next weekend. Time crunch! Am I close?

For the love of god someone please paint over the fire alarm shadow. That's just gross. 

Um. We're getting there. And so far, it's only Thursday!  I got time, I got time. I've got NINE DAYS. And I don't recall explicitly saying I'd have everything PAINTED by the wedding. (Details.)

Luckily, the seemingly-endless linear footage of MDF trim we got at my new favorite store came primed, so all I have to do is slap enough white paint on it to make it less of a chore when I go back through and caulk and fill all the nail holes I'm leaving. This is my first time using a pneumatic nailer, so perhaps I can be excused for taking WAY too long to realize it was jamming every other nail, so most of the baseboards I've put up are completely covered in holes that do not actually have nails in them. (I was sitting there on the floor trying to figure out why thirty nails didn't seem to be actually holding the baseboards on the walls. Oops.) In the end, Incredible Builder Dad came through with valuable wisdom, and recommended oiling the nailer. Turns out two drops of sewing machine oil in the air inlet before every use makes a happy, dare I say well-oiled nailer. KACHUNK KACHUNK KACHUNK. 

 Look at that! Baseboard, shoe and all. Just gorgeous, that's what that is. 

(Never mind the bookcase. That's getting painted later.)

So far, with nine days to go, I've got all of the baseboard with at least one coat of paint. Most of the living room/dining room baseboard is in place, and has even been shod by the stairs. Half the crown has been painted, and some of it is up, although I've been avoiding the bits that need to be coped, because that just looks annoying. (It won't be. I found a great tutorial for Dremel coping, and if there's anything I love, it's an excuse to Dremel something.)

 It's starting to look like a real, livable house! And it's a mess. Naturally.

I'm not 100% sure that weird stair column is structural, but I'm also not sure it's not, so...

I still haven't decided what to do with it.

I, um, still don't have any sawhorses. 

What I do have is a little black truck, which works just as well.

In yet another chapter of But It Was Free!: An Autobiography, we were on our way to our friends' house last Sunday for hamburgers and s'mores, when what do my searching eyes behold?

Free chairs! And despite being white and so very, erm, retro, they are not only in good shape, they are mostly clean. And now they're mine. (No, I have no idea what I'll do with them. Don't ask questions!)