Not a whole lot of progress has been made on our den. Most recently Andy and my dad have been installing the crown molding and it was like the blind leading the blind. Even though my dad has installed molding before and has done it a number of times in the house I grew up in (and it looks just fine I might add), it has been over a decade since he last did it and therefore he clearly has forgotten most of what he learned. But nonetheless, they pushed forward and began to hang our crown molding. Each piece that they worked on took them an average of two hours to cut and hang. And after each piece was hung? Well, let's just say they looked less than perfect. My dad, however, told us not to worry and once it was pained and filled in with wood-fill it would look just fine.
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| No molding yet. |
Then a miracle happened. One night after going out to dinner with some friends we had them all back to our house for drinks. Lucky for us, one is a professional contractor. Andy brought him upstairs to show him the "progress" on our crown molding and perhaps ask some advice on how to do the more complicated corners that were left. He was then able to cut and hang a piece that looked better than anything we had done so far, all it less than 10 minutes and after a night of drinks! He certainly put us to shame, but shared some great tricks of the trade to make going forward easier, such as don't use a hammer, get a nail gun.
Well, I got Andy a nail gun and compressor not too much later after that night for his birthday and he took down and rehung all the molding that he had already completed. Thank god, it looks one thousand times better. And THANK YOU MIKE, for all your advice!
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| Lucky for Andy, I didn't get any pictures of the "before" molding. Looks pretty good huh? |
Meanwhile, downstairs...
On the first floor we have what I affectionately like to call our "water closet." It's literally a coat closet with a toilet stuck in there. While it certainly isn't the ideal half-bath, it gets the job done for now since it's the only "bathroom" on the first floor. Oh and don't worry, there is a sink, it's just out in the hall.
Anyways, a little while ago we started to notice that the plaster on the ceiling was coming loose from the lath. Obviously I didn't want it to fall on my head or anyone else's head so I asked Andy to see if he could fix it. No problem he said. It was going to be a Sunday morning project.
Andy figured he just needed to buckle it up by drilling a few holes and filling them in with some construction adhesive to make the plaster stick to the lath.
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| Unfortunately I didn't get a before picture, so here is an artist's (my) rendering of the ceiling. |
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| Hard at work. |
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| Hmmm.... |
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| Ummm.... |
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| WHAT?!?! |
So much for that. And it's still like this today and probably will stay like this until we turn our "water closet" back into a coat closet.
