We decided to use a lot of stained wood
trim in this room. Since Diane wanted darker, richer colors in the dining room anyway,
it was a good opportunity to use stained wood. Initially, I wanted to put up really
nice wood, like oak, but that's a little out of our current budget!
I wasn't
happy at all with the selection of trim at Home Depot, so we looked up some lumber
yards in the phone book, and visited the nearest one (Heldt's, on 7th St & Bethany
Home). Their wood is WAY better than Home Depot, cheaper, and with decent service.
I would highly recommend a lumber yard for wood rather than HD. We did end up buying
the chair rail at HD, but everything else was from Heldt's.
First off, the bare wood has to be stained. This turned out to be
Diane's job.
Here she's staining some casing. The crown molding
and most of the chair rails
have been stained.
The first thing installed was part of the chair rail...
At this point, I had to finish the floor.
We decided not to concern ourselves
with the chips from old carpet strips,
or worry about cracks in the concrete.
When all of the tile and carpet is taken
up in the entire house, we'll decide
then what we want to do about that stuff
For now, I put a concrete sealer on the
floor, which slightly deepens the color and give a slight sheen..
Then I decided to move on to the crown molding. Since my walls are either plaster
or plaster and brick, I needed a way to secure the molding. I used Liquid Nails
and
glued dozens of these little angled blocks around the edge of the ceiling.
The
blue tape is so that I know where to nail when the molding is in place.
Crown molding is a major pain in the butt to get cut and
installed correctly.
Now I remember why I swore I'd never
go through that again after
putting it up in the bedroom!