Who Needs a Man?

After the thrilling encounter that was re-hanging our back door to open outwards instead of inwards, we got back to what we really wanted to be doing - hanging trim on all of the rough edges in the kitchen. As you can see, this was still when the extra kitchen window near the oven wasn't fully cut through.

Our first area to tackle was the join between the original back wall of the kitchen and the little extension we built so long ago. More specifically, the long beam running along the back wall and the boards on the little angled roof. We used this scrap piece of timber to work out how to cut the back edge off so that it would fit snugly against both the beam and the angled roof.

And then Tom replicated that cut on the long piece of timber that we had bought for that purpose. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of that.

And then weeks went by, and we got distracted doing other things.

Then last weekend, when both Tom and Daniel were working, I decided to take matters into my own hands. This unfinished job had been having over our heads too long! I could do, it right? Yes, although it did involve finding a few creative ways of propping up the pieces of timber without a second pair of hands, so I could get them screwed in.

Voila! It worked!

Unfortunately showing a play-by-play of this process is not particularly interesting. Not surprisingly, it essentially involved measuring, cutting, drilling, and screwing. Repeat.

So here we are with all of the under-beam pieces put in.

The corner where they all meet looked like this. Quite the mess. But no problem, if in doubt, put more trim on it!

So the next step was putting on the pretty trim that would cover over all the rest of those nasty joins. First of all, I had to measure the distance to one of the inside corners of the doorway...

And then mark that same distance on the back of the piece of trim (thankfully we had managed to find pre-made trim that matches all of the existing trim in the house when we were building the new doorway in my office).

Then, to get the angle for the join at the corner, I used this contraption that we've been calling a set square, although I'm not sure that's the right name for it. It comes with a handy little 45-degree angle, so I lined the corner of that up with the mark I had made, and drew a line along the ruler at the correct angle.

Then, I cut through that line...

Leaving me with this once it was turned over. This was my first trim cut of the day, so it's probably not the most perfect one. But you get the idea.

Fortunately for me, it fit perfectly on the doorway. So I screwed it in.

And then repeated the process for the top trim as well.

Then I moved on to the other side of the doorway, and... surprise surprise, repeated the process yet again.

Until the opening between the dining room and kitchen looked like this!

How about a close-up shot?

Then I moved on to the other side, the beam running along the back of the kitchen (where tom had already put up the under-beam trim). My problem here was that wall is over 3-metres long, it was impossible for me to physically hold up both ends of a piece of trim at once, since obviously my arm-span is not quite 3-metres.

So, I got creative again, and fashioned my own leaning tower of various household items that could prop up my timber for me.

It worked! Who needs a man? Just give me an assortment of bins and storage containers and I can do it myself!

So, with my trusty tower holding up the other end, I could start screwing in the trim on the complicated corner. I had tried to be clever and cut the end of each piece of trim at an angle, so that they could slot together seamlessly in the very corner. Unfortunately I cut one slightly too short to make that effective, so I'll have to putty up that seam.

The final piece for the day was cornice for the back wall where the angled roof section met the vertical wall boards. Again, I found a scrap piece to help me figure out what I needed to do to make it fit properly, since the trim is designed to cover a 90-degree corner, whereas because of the angle of the ceiling, we were dealing with a larger angle than that.

I established that if I shaved off part of the back edge (where it meets the ceiling), it would sit closer, cutting back on the gap at the top (which you can see here because it's casting a little shadow on the ceiling board).

I wasn't confident enough to use a saw to cut off that edge, so I broke out the sander with some rough sandpaper, and sanded it. It did the job quite well, and by then it was a simple matter for me to attach the trim to the wall.

Conceptually, this process seemed very simple. And in practice it was too. But as we've discovered with most things we've attempted in this renovation, it takes a LONG time! I spent all day on this. And haven't even started on trimming the windows! Sigh.

Oh well, at least I've got a very clear before and after to reassure me that I've accomplished something!

 BEFORE                                                               AFTER