I know I said the kitchen would be the next priority in this house, but I want to keep you on your toes and as a result, I pulled a complete 180. Don’t worry, finishing the kitchen is still on the short-term fall goal list. Nonetheless, the focus has shifted to one of the upstairs bedrooms. My brother-in-law Michael lived here for a bit during his off seasons (he’s a baseball player) and as a result, we hadn’t done anything to the room besides a very half-assed paint job on the walls & window trim just to get moved in quickly. Mike & his girlfriend, Kate, are in a new place this fall, and they came to take all of their furniture leaving me with a blank slate begging to be made over. This makes me giddy. Fresh meat, if you will. The outlets are almond (yuck) and the trim around hardwoods is non-existent. The floors that Matt installed run right up to the wall. You can see where we threw a quick coat of paint on the wall leaving space to add trim (that only took 3 years).
There is one corner of the room where the walls weren’t completely square. There was a small gap in the floor and it has driven Matt nuts since he laid the floors (I was fine to just cover it up with the trim).
The gap was 1/4” wide at the smallest and grew to 1/2” at the widest (on the right side of the picture above). It is quite convenient that Matthew kept the rest of our hardwoods so that we could match the floor exactly. That guy, I tell ya. I think I’ll keep him around for a while. He measured and drew a line on the wood where he would freehand it through the table saw.
Then it was time to roll. I get so nervous when he uses power tools. I really love him with both of his hands in tact.
So nervous that I move around to get the best camera angle of the progress.
When we laid the sliver of hardwood into the gap, it fit perfectly. Matt used a chisel to apply pressure to the wood so that it would be flush with the already installed flooring.
While holding the chisel in place, he nailed that sucker in.
With the gap in the floor fixed nicely, Matt moved onto measuring out and cutting the new trim we bought at Lowe’s this morning. We buy the pre-primed wood, even though it’s a bit more expensive, because it is a huge time saver for the resident painter (yours truly). Check out my mums in the picture below - so colorful and bountiful!
Matt set it into place and everything was coming together nicely.
I was thrilled with what < 90 minutes of work and < $50 did. Please ignore the poor lighting in the picture below. It was rainy and there is literally no light in this room.
What an improvement from before!
Next up this week: filling in the nail holes, painting the newly installed trim, and applying some fresh white paint to the almond baseboard heaters.
Next up the following weekend: new paint on the walls and switching out the almond outlets with white outlets.
Next up this fall: furniture shopping & rug shopping! (My favorite part!)