Still Don't Need a Man

Last time I was left alone in the house for the weekend, I attacked the kitchen with trim, ending with this result.

It wasn't finished though, so I spent the next week gazing at the unfinished bits and chomping at the bit to sort them out. So the next weekend, when I found myself alone yet again (what's with the boys in my household conveniently having to work on the weekend lately?), I didn't waste any time. All of my previous trim effort had completely neglected these guys - our little symmetrical windows.

So obviously I had to correct that. But in order to do that, I had to get on speaking terms with this guy, the circular saw. Tom's good friends with him, but to date I hadn't been brave enough to introduce myself.

But there was no avoiding it any longer. Because of this. I needed to attach some plain trim to the insides of each window frame, to cover over the ugly exposed edges that were still visible. But we couldn't get pieces of timber that were quite the right width, so I was going to have to cut about 8mm off the entire length of each board.

 

Thankfully I had watched Tom working with this guy enough to have a few tricks up my sleeve. Well, the concept of the tricks. Whether I could actually physically pull them off was another question.

As you saw above, I marked where I needed my cut line to be on the board. Then, I measured the distance between the blade on the circular saw and the outside edge of the plate that sits around the blade.

And then I measured and marked that same distance from the cut line that I had drawn...

Then carefully positioned a long level in line with the extra marks that I had made.

And clamped it in place so it wouldn't budge.

And then... the part where all of that manouevreing finally makes sense... I pulled out the circular saw (took about 5 minutes to figure out how to actually turn the thing on), and then I could just rest the edge of the plate along the level, so that the blade cut a beautiful straight line exactly where it was supposed to.

And... I just can't describe how proud I was when it fitted perfectly exactly where it was supposed to (it's the vertical one on the left there).

I repeated that process for the other side of that window (and the second window), along with the tops of each.

And then I moved on to the window on the other wall (the one we had to relocate - boo). In the first round of trim-ing, I put up this cornice that extended the full length of that wall (including above the window).

As you can see in this older shot of the window though, that cornice had nothing but air behind it over the window.

So I had to address that problem. I found an almost-the-right-dimensions timber post outside, and used my circular saw trick again to cut it down to the perfect size.

And bolted it in. It sounds easy, and it's always looked kind of easy when Tom has done this kind of thing. But let me tell you, it was HARD! Bolting timber upwards (i.e. when gravity is completely against you) into a hardwood frame while perched precariously on a window sill with a sink on one side and a 5-metre drop on the other side is not easy. But I survived. Just. I shudder to think what might have happened to me if I'd actually fallen, since I was home by myself. Don't follow my example, kids.

And then I moved on to the bottom of that same window. We'd saved a bit of internal window sill trim from the original kitchen window (just as well, it's probably virtually impossible to get this stuff now without having it custom made), and thankfully it was the perfect height to sit straight on top of the benchtop.

I then repeated my board-cutting process to trim out the two vertical edges of that window frame, and then I could finally move on to the really pretty stuff - the trim. And in virtually no time (well, quite a lot of time actually, if you count the fact that I spent the next day wearing the skin of my index fingers puttying all of the screw holes and joins, so these photos were taken after that), the twin windows looked like this...

The west window looked like this...

And all the other bits looked like this.

And this. As you can see, I'm still not entirely finished, since that corner above the trim still needs an inconspicuous piece to cover over that gap.

And I ran out of putty before I could finish off the join between the trim and the cornice on this window.

So now the room looks like this. It could sure use a lick of paint, but at least now there are hardly any ugly exposed edges!

Am I totally a pro, or what?!

A Bit of Fluff

WARNING: This post contains another so-far-unseen 'Trash The Dress' photo shoot peek.

After all the manly construction work involved in putting up the trim in the kitchen, I decided that I had to balance my week out with a bit of girly art creation.

So I went and had a look at my still very unfinished office frame wall.

More specifically, I decided to pay attention to the gold frame that's been filled with black since we hung it.

I found a nice piece of orange paper in my craft supplies, and decided that it would become the background to my art, to replace all that black.

I traced the outline of the frame backing, and cut it to size...

And then came the issue of what I was going to put in front of my orange background. The answer? Feathers.

That not-very-attractive shot above is what is left of one of the pillows that Tom and I destroyed during our 'Trash The Wedding Dress' photo shoot. Here's why!

In trying to clean up after ourselves a bit when we'd finished pillow-fighting, we gathered up as many of the feathers that we could off the ground, which unfortunately involved gathering up a lot of leaves and twigs as well. So, I sifted out through the ugly bits, leaving me with this container of nice clean feathers.

Then I pulled out the Craft & Hobby PVA Glue...

Squirted a nice big blob on a plastic takeaway container lid, and dipped the ends of each feather into the glue.

I was trying to channel this Juju hat inspiration...

And got so caught up in the gluing process that I forgot to take in-progress photos. This is what I had about halfway through.

When I deemed it sufficiently feathered, I popped it in the frame...

And hung it on the wall, waiting until the next morning to take a much less yellow-tinged shot of it. But I wasn't really happy with it. Not only was the orange combined with the gold a little bit icky-looking (that's an official term, by the way), but I'd cut the orange paper slightly too small, so it was bulging out a bit at the top (you can just see that in this photo).

So, I changed the plan, and brought down the little white square frame next to it. I've been spending way too much time gazing at this particular family since it's taking too long to fill all of my frames, so replacing them with my orange/feather combination seemed like a good idea.

I held up the family against the back of my feather art and roughly traced the edges on the orange card, which was a bit difficult since I didn't want to put the art down and squash the feathers...

And then I cut around my tracings.

And popped the feathers into the frame in front of the glass, since obviously they wouldn't have fitted behind the glass. So much better!

Then up it went on the wall!

I'm very happy with it, and it's a lovely reminder of our fun photo shoot. It also brings out the little pop of orange in the art to the left of it, which I don't think I've actually ever introduced you to.

I originally stumbled across this image on Pinterest...

Source: imgfave.com via Louise on Pinterest

And decided to try my hand at drawing something similar with some coloured pencils.

It's not going to win any art awards, but I like it.

So there you have it. Very very slowly, I'm filling up that frame wall and evicting that stock photo family.

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