Television, and Some Catch-Up

One of the nice things about starting to wrap up some of the "structural" elements of our work is being able to shift to actually making things look good. One of our first steps in this direction was to get a TV cabinet from our good friends at IKEA so that we can keep our TV more out of sight. We're very pleased:













Ilana once again used her unique IKEA-building skills to put together this two-box challenge in record time with top-notch results.

If this public policy thing doesn't work out, it's nice to know she'll always have career options in putting together MARKÖRs and MALMs.



We've also recently uncovered a few more photos from our interim "mauve" paint job (now covered by Maritime "Ahoy!" White). Here's one:

Perhaps you can now see why we went back to the off-white. It's not a bad color, it's just not a living room color.





Also, we realized that we've yet to post pictures of our new light fixtures:

This is in our stairwell. Once again, Matt our amazing electrician came through. He replaced our two outdoor lights with motion detector lights, and then replaced our two horribly ugly, 60s/70s/80s chandeliers (they were so bad it's hard to know which decade to blame) with some nice new fixtures (that Ilana got from Home Depot with encouragement from my mom).


We also realized that our picture of the new light above the dining room table allows us to show you the progress from one specific sight line in our house: the kitchen looking towards the dining/living room. Here's the complete series, with our new light making an appearance in the last shot:


I'll leave you with one more photo I found: that of a very cute Ilana painting once her hand finally healed:

Crown Molding

I'm not sure where Ilana got the idea for crown molding, but I'm glad she did. After we finished painting the walls the other weekend, the next step was to install crown molding. Luckily, Home Depot doesn't have a huge selection of molding for ceilings, so we got a small sample of one and brought it home. We hung up the 3 foot section to see how we felt about it. My mom came over and immediately asked, "is that upside down?" After doing some research online, we determined she was correct.

So it was back to Home Depot for the "Pro Pack" of molding, cut in half by a nice employee there so that I could fit all the pieces in the Prius. And now, you can simply follow along with our process:

Step 1: I laid out all the strips and painted them first. This was Saturday (2/28). I have to say it was a much more enjoyable process with the ability to listen to the Giants on the radio.


Step 2: Get a lesson on mitre saw from Seymour. The mitre saw was another amazing offering from Berkeley's Tool Lending Library. This was Sunday (3/1).




Step 3: Use mitre saw to cut molding. Many thanks to Jim F. for the molding book that specified the exact angles needed for our measurements. Nevermind that I misread the molding angle the first time and we had to take 4 pieces down off the wall to do them properly.





Step 4: Nail the crown molding up. That's right, by hand (the Tool Library doesn't have items that can be used as weapons, like nail guns).



Step 5: Enjoy the idea of the crown molding, complete with unfinished nail work.






Step 6: Wait one week.

Step 7: Fill the gaps and nail holes with goo. Ilana did an amazing job of completing my less-than-perfect angles and corners. This was yesterday (Saturday, 3/7).



Step 8: Use bare hands for truly sophisticated looking results.










Step 9: Paint the corners, connectors, and nail holes for a good finished look. Picasso-style is optional. Don't worry, this was just for the corners; I used a larger brush for the rest of my work.

Step 10: Enjoy. This is our best set of corners. Not coincidentally, they were also the last I installed. Further, our "closet" here has no texture, which also made it easier. Either way, it's a beaut!

This photo gives you a sense of the whole room.

Now we actually get to consider hanging up some of our awesome and almost forgotten artwork.