Woodwork & Cabinets

Where should I start?  Mikey, the plumber is working night to finish up our plumbing. KC from Swedberg Electric came through, finishing up the wiring.  Now, Brad and I have ceiling fans and light fixtures to hang...which should be interesting considering every time Brad does electric there is a lot of swearing and it takes quite a large chunk of time.

Don't get me wrong, the man is amazing.   His skilled carpentry work never cease to amaze me.  For example, take a look at the beautiful wainscoting he designed and built.  It is made up of four different layers of wood! Oh, and by the way, he made the stairs as well.

Brad has also built three (That's right, three!) staircases.

Main stairs going in

Main stairs profile

Main stairs done!

Attic Stairs

He also built wainscoting for the underneath side of the attic stairs.

Did I mention Brad also made my tub beautiful and replicated the original panels under all of the windows?

So now, all of the base trim, casing, and doors are painted or stained and installed and look fabulous!  Did I tell you about our base trim?  It was a nightmare!  

The first fiasco with it was when a helper stained the base trim the wrong color.  We then made a poor choice and re-stained it to try to fix the color.  Now, not only was it the wrong color, but it had way too much stain on it.  The mishap that sent us back to square one, though, was this....

Brad took a week off from work to finish trimming the house. At a friend's shop, we had stained, polyed, sanded, and polyed again all of the casing and trim.   This was weeks before Brad was going to need it and it had plenty of time to dry.  About a week before he was going to start installing it all, he stacked it face-to-face and plastic wrapped the ends together.  Then, he transported it back to our house.  When he unwrapped it, it had stuck together and the finish got ruined.  

Our options were to spend $1300 to reorder all new base trim, have a special knife made for a sander and have the stain sanded off, or have it chemically stripped and the lightly sand it all.  We went with the last option...what a pain in the butt! After one set back after another, the base trim was done...finally! 

Just when we thought we were done staining and polying, we ordered and received our newel posts, rails, and spindles for our staircases.  Since I have proved (on multiple occasions) that I am incapable of polying without runs or bristle marks, my job is staining and sanding, and Brad is in charge of polying.  Late one night while staining, I came up with a catchy tune (sung to the (( Bottles of Beer on the Wall" tune)..."99 wood spindles to stain, 99 wood spindles.  Take one down, stain it brown, 98 wood spindles to stain." And when it got REALLY late and this happened (see below) all I could do was laugh...a bit hysterically.  

1 down 98 to go

Domino effect

Since I started writing this post (and didn't post it), the spindles, hand rails, and newel posts have been installed and look beautiful!

In my last post, I talked about the kitchen counter tops, but failed to mention the obvious fact that the cabinets are also installed.