White on white on white

Urgh.

We're so close. So very close.

But oh. my. god. The freaking trim. The trim, the trim, that terrible trim.

Cut the trim. Dado the trim. Fasten the trim. Fill the holes in the trim. Sand the trim. Caulk the trim. Tape the trim. Paint the trim. Paint the trim. Remove the tape, and touch up the wall around the trim.

Rinse.

Repeat.

Urgh.

I guess the good news is that I won't be doing a whole lot of the old before-and-after pictures in this post. The difference between one coat of white paint and two coats of white paint might make all the difference in the world when it's live and in person, but it doesn't show up at all on camera - not even MY awesome camera.

(Did I mention I got it cleaned and it's all shiny-like-new-like?)

The bad news, I suppose, would be that there are a whole lot of pictures of, well, white paint. But if I have to suffer through putting the crap on, you have to suffer through looking at it. (Trust me, you're really getting the better end of that deal.)

Anyway, when last we left off (besides the pie, obviously - which I should also hasten to point out that I did not make), we'd just finished hanging the door between the office and the laundry room, and built and installed the bookcase. So, for starters, here's the bookcase with not one, not two, but FOUR coats of paint on it:



Here are some of the baseboards, which have all been cut, attached, filled, and painted (except for a couple in the back of the closet that need a little more sanding):



And the trim around the closet:



And the doors that will eventually go in the closet:



And, lest you think the laundry room isn't getting any love, we also put up the trim on the laundry-room side of the office door:




So we had one last little bit of construction-type work left (uh, I think it's the last bit of construction-type work) and that was to build a new casing for the old, battered office door and hang it in the doorway between the laundry room and the workshop. This doorway, in fact:



Of course, we originally made this plan back when we thought it would be cool to keep at least part of the original house, and before we realized that setting the old door on fire and buying a new one would be a lot less hassle at this stage of the game, but that's renovations for you! Ha ha! Please kill me.

Anyway, here's the old battered door itself, patiently awaiting our attention:



And here it is with a new casing:



Woo!

Here it is hanging in the doorway!



Woo woo!

And, of course, (oh, you KNEW this was coming, didn't you?) here is it after we took it down and replaced the hinges, routered out the casing properly, and rehung it in the opening:



Sigh. Just once. ONCE. That's all I ask. But hey, check it out - now it CLOSES:



Pretty sweet, eh?


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The Really Important Stuff

Blah blah door blah blah trim blah blah paint blah blah blah...

PIE!!!!




Yeah. That's about all I have time or energy for right now. Check back tomorrow.



Maybe Tuesday.


Yeah.
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Filler post

Figured I should make an update just to check in and say, "Hey, we're still doing this thing."

That said, there are no pictures. You wouldn't want any. Trust me.

So here's the short list of what we've done since the last update:

• Filled and sanded the screw holes in the door casing between the laundry room and the office.


• Sanded both sides of the office door.


• Determined how much we'll have to cut off the ends of the closet doors to make them fit, and worked out a way to install the trim around the closet so the door will still open without looking ridiculous.
  
  (This was harder than you might think, mostly due to some stupid, stupid drywall edges and - of course - non-plumb/non-level framing/drywalling and general asshattery.)


• Installed trim around office door.


• Filled and sanded the screw holes in the trim around the bookcase.


• Primed the bookcase.


• Primed the bookcase again.


• Put a coat of white paint on the primed bookcase.
  
  (I'm so freaking SICK of painting a coat of white paint on a coat of white paint. Holy crap does that suck. And that's also why there are no pictures. Trust me, it's so boring, I can't even describe how bad the pictures would be without falling asleep. Oh, I will post one picture; getting the paint into those top four narrow shelves was an absolute bitch until I saw this pretty little number at the paint store:
  
  
  
  Cute as the dickens, and SO amazingly useful - not just for the shelves, but also for getting the side of the trim when it's too close to the wall for a normal brush.)


• Painted the bathroom door (both sides).


• Painted the bathroom door again (both sides).


• Installed baseboards around eighty-five percent (give or take) of the office.
  
  (I suppose I could have taken a picture of the baseboards, but I haven't finished installing all of them because we have to put the vertical trim up around the closet first, and can't do that until we put the horizontal trim across the top of the closet, and can't do that because it needs to be trimmed down first and I can't do that because I left the dado blade in the table saw and put it away around the corner in the laundry room so I'd have room to install the baseboards and I don't feel like lugging it back into the office and changing the blade over when I'll probably have to put the dado back on anyway to do the trim around the workshop door - if we ever get THAT installed...
  
  Anyway, I'll take a photo when they're done, mmkay?)


• Painted the trim (two coats) on the bathroom side of the bathroom door.


• Painted the trim (two coats) on the office side of the bathroom door.


• Installed the handle and strike plate on the bathroom door

Uh.... I think that's about it... Oh, we also mowed the lawn, got our fridge fixed, watched parts of the three games the Jays lost to the Indians, ruled out one of the places we were thinking of getting hitched, and made an excellent mac'n'cheese with some of the old cheddar the Top Brass brought last week. But nobody cares about any of that except us. So... yeah. Pretty full weekend.



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We seem to be running out of holes....

There seem to be fewer and fewer holes in the basement these days. Because we keep putting things in them or covering them up with other things. And no, not just random things we find lying around. Things that are supposed to go there. Things that we bought or built for that specific purpose.

It's actually somewhat freaky, to tell you the truth. Things are ... getting finished. Like, actually done-finished, not just finished-until-we-finish-this-other-part-we-needed-to-finish-first-and-then-we-can-do-more-work-on-it.

Yeah.

First off, we do have a small cause for celebration: we passed the final plumbing inspection! Woo! Couldn't have done it without Leonard, of course. The guy's an absolute gem.

With that all wrapped up, however, it was time to turn some serious attention to the trim and other bits of finishing that must be done before we can pass the final, FINAL inspection, the dreaded (and deservedly maligned) Final Occupancy Inspection(tm).

Not that the inspector is likely to care how much attention to detail we apply when filling nail holes and sanding the edges of things, but that's more for our benefit anyway.

Oh, and something I think I forgot last post: we installed one more of the doors in the basement, the one between the office and the laundry room:





We had to put that in as a barrier to keep the cats out of the office while we were sanding, prepping, priming, sanding, painting, caulking, and painting the window wells. They're still crooked, but at least they're white, shiny, and crooked:





Oh, and did I mention, done?

Anyway, the big project this past week was the built-in bookcase. (You can see the hole it's supposed to go into in the second of the two pictures of the door up there- the big hole to the right, with all the crap sitting in it.)

I, of course, had never built a built-in book case before, but I know someone who has. And he just happened to be in town this week! Amazing coincidence, that, eh?

So poor Top Brass Pa had to spend his Saturday on vacation helping me manoeuver a jinormous sheet of 3/4-inch good-one-side plywood around on top of the table saw out in the driveway. He was very gracious about it, however, and I must admit that I probably couldn't have done it without him. That's not to say that he actually did any of the work, mind you - I made every measurement, cut, and tool mark on the bookcase myself - but his advice was invaluable, and he was always on hand to catch the pieces of lumber as they came off the other end of the table saw. (I actually only made one wrong cut - and we had enough spare wood from the sheet that it didn't matter at all. For me, that's pretty damn good!)

What we did was to take some measurements of the hole and design the shelf layout on paper. We then built a box, complete with back, that could be lifted right into position on the two-by-four supports I had built into the wall when I framed it. Overall, it worked like a freaking charm.

So here's my wee beauty after we sledge-hammered it into position (it was a shade tight on the bottom. Just a little):



And just in case you thought it was a simple matter of nailing some boards together, think again:



All of the shelves are dado cuts - and yes, that took a lot longer to do it that way. Nearly the whole day, in fact.

Here it is with the trim around it and the edge pieces glued and nailed into the shelf faces (the tape is just to hold the trim until the glue sets - it's not staying, no matter how well you think it matched the colour scheme):



And yes, the nails in the trim are some of the holes we've spent the rest of the weekend filling.

Among the other holes-that-aren't-holes-anymore, are the two heating vents and the cold air return:







And that's about it for this update. I'm hoping to do the final sanding on the trim for the door and bookcase tomorrow, followed by a coat of primer on the bookcase. Then it's paint, paint, paint. Oh, and caulking of course. And then some painting.

But damn me to hell if it isn't starting to look like a real room!



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