Browsing the archives for the trim tag

Studio Trim Color Revealed

4 Comments
28 Jun, 2010
Meredith
Paint, studio

I’ll spare you the suspense and just get right down to business – Stephen picked high gloss, super manly black for the studio trim.  (Need to catch up on our project?  Click here)

Here’s how it all went down.

After sanding down all the existing old wood trim in the room, we started to paint.  Luckily I learned my lesson with windows when we did our living room trim and knew it didn’t matter if I got paint on the glass.  A handy-dandy razor blade is all you need to fix that.

Once I had a coat on the window and doorway trim, it was on to the baseboards.  We tried to avoid getting paint on our new floors by sneaking brown painter’s paper under the baseboards.  Sadly, any paint that we got on the paper acted like an adhesive and stuck it to the trim.  :(

Next time, we may try using painter’s tape or pulling the paper up before the paint dries.  If there is a next time. haha.

After the paint dried, we put on a second coat and then went back around and edged everything with our wall paint color to get a nice sharp line.  I don’t use tape to do this, but I know lots of people swear by it.  For me, getting in the painting groove usually makes my lines straighter than if I’d wasted time taping.

After we’d finished our glossy black trim, it was time to switch out our outlets and light switch to coordinate.

Now don’t let this picture fool you… at this point it was about 9 pm on a Sunday night after having starting painting that trim Saturday morning.  The real life version of this picture looks like this.

Yep, nighttime electrical work requires a head lamp, people.  Be prepared.

After we turned the power back on and we were sure all the outlets worked, I was in charge of putting on the outlet covers.

Besides the 4 outlets and 1 light switch, our 1981 ranch featured a lovely ROUND telephone jack in the studio.  Needless to say, not many of our local hardware stores carry ROUND telephone jacks, especially black ones.  The solution?  Spray paint for the cover and a Sharpie for the part attached to the wall.

We weren’t too upset by our DIY black telephone jack cover, especially since it got covered up by the couch anyway.

So do you want to see the room to date?  Here it is!

Admittedly not the best photo I’ve ever taken, but it was nighttime and we were just too excited to share the result of a weekend of painting trim!  Still on the to-do list are baseboards in the closet on the other side of the room, installing threshold pieces at the entrance to the room and the entrance to the closet, and (oh yeah) decorating!

So what do you think of Stephen’s color choices?  Modern?  Manly?  Meh?

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Tackling Trim

5 Comments
18 Jun, 2010
Meredith
building, studio, tutorial

In case you didn’t notice when we painted the studio, we snuck some baseboards in on ya between the “during painting” and “after painting” photos.  Well, here’s a run-down of how we pulled that off.

When we first bought Heardmont, Stephen and I decided we’d replace and paint the baseboards as we changed out the flooring and that we’d paint the original wood trim around all the windows and doors to match.  Needless to say, we had never installed any kind of trim before this project, but it was pretty painless. Because we knew we’d be using any extra trim on other rooms in the house eventually, we decided buying in bulk was the way to go.

We picked up 8 – 16 foot long pieces of standard 3.5″ baseboards, some caulk, a miter box and saw, a coping saw, and some nails for our nail gun and then loaded up the Subaru.

First step was to measure the first wall we were trimming and then cut the trim to that same length.

Here’s the miter box in action.  We decided a $10-15 miter box and saw was more cost effective than a $80+ miter saw for our one-room-at-a-time approach to trimming.

Each piece after the first one also had to be coped – that is, cut to fit up against the piece before it with the coping saw.

We installed all of the baseboards by nailing them in place with our pneumatic air gun (on permanent loan from a friend).  We marked the studs ahead of time with blue painters tape so we knew we were nailing into the strongest parts of the wall.

As you can see we were no experts when it came to fitting those corners together, but that’s where caulk came in to save the day!

Now we promise there’s a reason we chose gray caulk over the typical white variety.  It’s because Stephen picked a slightly unconventional color for the trim in this room.  What color did he choose? Stick around for the answer and more progress pics!

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The Beam is Done!

6 Comments
19 May, 2010
Meredith
Before and After, Paint, building, dining room

In my head, I’m singing the title of this post to the tune of ”The Heat is On” by Glenn Frey because I’m so PUMPED about all we accomplished this weekend!  (Side note: apparently that song was written the year I was born… oh the 80s :)

Number 1 accomplishment on the list?  Finishing the beam in the dining room.  The process was easy enough, just time consuming.

Here’s what we started with – raw wood, lots of gaps, lots of rough wood filler.

First thing Saturday morning, I started sanding down the beam for a nice smooth finish.  We ran to Lowe’s and picked up some quick-dry, white silicone caulk.  We chose the GE brand.  It said it was paintable in 30 minutes, and the stuff lived up to its word.  No complaints here!

Stephen got to work caulking the edges of the beam while I pulled out a can of the best primer ever, KILZ!

Here’s a close up of the beam, post caulk and primer.

We went ahead and caulked the trim around our dining room and kitchen windows while we were at it.

After we caulked and primed on Saturday, Stephen moved on to his garage project…

Turns out there was.

… while I tackled another trouble area in our house – our walk-in closet.  More on this project to come!

We woke up bright and early Sunday morning ready to start back on the beam, and I prepared myself for the day of painting ahead of me.  First I painted a nice thick coat of Valspar’s Betsy’s Linen white in a semi-gloss over the beam (and on the pre-primed window trim while I was at it).

I really can’t say enough about how much I love KILZ primer.  That stuff covers so well, I only needed to do ONE coat of trim paint and we were done!  (And no, I’m not being paid to say that.. although I wouldn’t mind being paid!  Are you listening KILZ? ;)

Next, it was time for edging on one side of the beam with our kitchen wall color – Valspar’s Cincinnatian Hotel Carl Tan (weird name, huh?).  I also touched up around the kitchen window at this point.

Third paint color for the day?  The dining room side of the beam – Valspar’s Mocha Syrup.  Why, oh why did we decide different paint colors in these two rooms was a good idea???  This was the darkest paint of the day by far, so it required 2 coats over the white primer and caulk that had made it onto our walls.

Here I am touching up the dining room trim.

Finally it was time to touch up the ceiling.  When we scraped the popcorn off our ceilings in the dining room and kitchen, we primed and then painted them with this ceiling paint.  I love that it goes on purple and dries white!  It makes it so much easier to see where you’ve already painted and any spots you might have missed.

Can you see the purple?

At the end of the day Sunday, after 5 different cans of paint and 2 tubes of caulk, here is the finished beam!

And with our new curtains.

What do you think?  I really want to share full pictures of the dining room and kitchen with you soon.  We’ll see if I get a day where both rooms are clean at the same time! :)

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