Ben went out of town to help his brother move for the weekend and my parents were dying to see our new floors so I conned them into helping me paint all of the base boards for the upstairs. Again this project was supposed to be easy. We already had most of the trim for the family room and all I had to do was go to Lowes (where Ben positive he bought it there...or Home Depot, but definitely not Menards) and purchase the trim for the kitchen and hallway. So parents arrived on a Saturday in April, we loaded up in the Prius and headed to Home Depot with a sample of the existing base boards. No luck at Home Depot. Granted, Ben had purchased the base boards about 4 years prior, so I wasn't so sure we were going to be able to find the same thing. Next stop Lowes, nothing even close to similar. I googled the sku number, and came up with nothing. I figured it no longer existed. So I call Ben...he doesn't answer. Time for an executive decision. I find some base boards I like, and I decide to just buy all new baseboards for the upstairs. Problem solved. Or...so I thought. We got all of the baseboards home, and had a very productive afternoon painting everything white. The baseboards already were white so they just needed a quick coat of paint so they were the same white as everything else.
My dad- (aka Mr. Detail Oriented) was assigned the task of painting my favorite door in the kitchen white. I was extremely nervous about this, because I loved the door in it's current condition but we already had enough colors of wood going on the kitchen. Luckily, it turned out lovely.
Fast forward to Sunday evening when Ben gets home. He sees the baseboards I purchased and he instantly hates the material they are made out of. They are not styrofoam but something similar-ish. I offer that we can return them, ignoring the fact that they are already painted but Ben decides we can keep them. We spend the next 2 weeks installing these baseboards. There were lots of colorful words to go along with this project. The first saw blade we used to cut the boards melted them. Cue my laughing and Ben's colorful language. We tried another saw blade and had no problem. Next up, we don't have a 90 degree angle in our house, so every cut was frustrating. I officially became the fixer...Ben would cut, install and I would follow behind with putty, filling in the gaps. Then I spent my day off the next week laying on the floor doing touch up painting. Fun...not!
The next weekend we had to run to Menards to get some trim for around the cabinets and my worse nightmare happened. We are walking down the trim aisle and low and behold there is the baseboard I was looking for. Cue Ben's laughing and my immediate frustration. Ben was so sure he hadn't purchased the trim at Menards...he was positive, and he was lying. We did decided to buy enough of this baseboard to complete the family room. The bad news Menards takes terrible care of their trim so it was all nicked or dented in spots. We negotiated with the guy at Menards and walked out with $50 worth of trim for $11. It didn't matter that it was beat up in some spots since we had to trim the pieces anyways.
I think it took about 6 weeks from start to finish until the trim was done. I hated most of this project. I have no desire to repeat it but it does look really nice.
Here are a few pictures:
First a few to remind you where we started:
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| My favorite door before.... |
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| The old hallway view.... |
And now for the after- SO much better!!!
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| I love this door...it is the only cool anything we have in the house, I wish all the doors were original. |
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| The windows finally have trim, that only took 7 years :) |
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| The new hallway view!! |
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| Absolutely nothing to do with trim, but it is my favorite spot in the house. My best find on craigslist yet! |
On a side note...some crafting disaster posts might return in the next few months. I was looking at one of my pinterest boards last night and there were a few projects that I forgot about that looked like they might be fun. We plan to spend the rest of summer outside as much as possible and trying to delegate as much wedding planning as we can to other people (ha)!
Until next time (which may be a week or 6 months)!
Cheers,
A
