That all being said, I think that the way that we're living AND renovating and not living TO renovate has been key in our survival. Between the visit to South Bend for Tiff's Mom's b-day, the visit to Chicago to see Lucas and a trip to the first ND game of the season; we haven't really been punching the clock super hard lately in terms of work. But we have had some great successes in the last week that are putting us ahead.
With touchups being done on the, now non-hubba bubba room (grey guest room), we were ready to tackle trim. We had bought a simpler profile baseboard to use in the bedrooms to give them a bit of a premium feel and provide a good contrast to the colors we chose. The only challenge? The outlets on the window walls were low...and I do mean low. Less than six inches off the deck and these were going to interfere with the trim. To solve the problem I called on a couple of topic experts for their two cents. I first spoke with Greg Burnett of Manor Redevlopment in Chicago, IL and then to Gary Katz from the Katz Roadshow and JLC fame. Being mildly competent with tools and building and being able to ask some of the best in the industry questions is a great combo if you are doing this sort of stuff yourself. For these low outlets, they suggested custom built-out plinth blocks that would set the outlets a bit further from the wall but created an intended interference in the trim (as opposed to just cutting out pieces of the trim like the guy that owned the house before us did to deal with these sorts of things). The results? FANTASTIC! The block with the extended outlet is visible in the photo above next to the leg of the ironing board on the left side. Better pic to come, this one was from my Blackberry.Some people might be wondering what the ironing board is doing in the room...the simple answer is that it is the one room that we have closet bars installed in and thusly contains all of our ironables. So this is the most natural place for the board, though the juxtaposition of it next to an air nailer might say something about the duality in man of the need to build and the need for order or maybe the breakdown of traditional gender roles in the modern household. You can categorize it how you want artistically, for us it's just the logical place to keep the ironing board. You come to a lot of strange conclusions and compromises with stuff like this during renovation.
This weekend's ND/Mich game will put the brakes on a bit, once again, on some reno work, but we would like to get a lot more of the trim done. A word to the wise, when running trim in an old plastered house, inevitably you will find that your trim job would've gone better if the dude that made the walls in the 50's had made them straight and that picking the straightest molding at the home center doesn't mean squat when you get to using the nailer. Neither do the most accurate mitres, scarf joints, etc. Hopefully room two will go a bit faster now that I am learned in some of the traps of trim carpentry.
Keep wishing us luck and we'll keep you posted on progress.
