Living Room: Done?

Every week we put "framing the pass-through" on the to-do list. And every week we put it off until the next week. Well, not this time. What's more American than home improvement? Um, shopping malls. But DIY'ing one's condo is a close second. And it's a fine, fine way to spend a July 4 weekend.

We completed things from the kitchen side, but had yet to put finishing touches on the view from the living room. Sadly, though we have documented the view FROM the kitchen view well, we do not have a lot of shots of the view TO the kitchen from the other side.

This is the best we could find:

Eager to get moving, we started our project before we realized we didn't have a good before shot, so this will have to do:
The first step was to add texture. We hate texture, but texture begets more texture and there were portions of the wall that were smooth and looked out of place after we enlarged the pass-through. So we sprayed texture-in-a-bottle where needed:
Then we painted:
And finally, using Seth's new and now beloved mitre saw, we framed the whole thing in:
Ilana pulled out her killer spackling skills to complete the job. Dare we call the living room done? Nah. We still don't have art work on the walls. We'll throw it on the to-do list and maybe it'll get done by 2010.

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.