Last night we decided to start putting up the crown molding. We have some (very limited) experience with this, so we should have known what we were getting into. After some quick google searching (how did people get things done before google??) we decided to follow the directions on the This Old House website. Seemed simple enough. Step one was to install the first piece with both ends cut square. We cut the crown molding (we had already stained/polyed earlier in the week) and started nailing it up... The directions said something about finding studs and joists to attach to, but since our joists are running parallel to the crown molding, and this is a drywall over plaster over brick wall, we just starting shooting in nails and hoping that they would catch something. At this point we were still having good luck, almost every nail seemed to catch and the first piece crown molding is secure.

At one point I found myself yelling at the crown molding "I can make tiny little scale models of entire buildings, I will not let you defeat me!" to which the piece of pine decided to show me by starting to look even worse than the first attempt and Mike came back upstairs to remind me that we have 4 more corners that will need to be coped and I shouldn't be such an angry perfectionist. So I gave up for the evening and went to bed.

We've been slowly putting the office back together. The walls are painted, the ceiling is done... we still need a new light fixture but can live with the bare bulb look until we find something we like. But the baseboards... and the crown molding... it is much more time consuming to install stained woodwork than it is white painted woodwork. Plus we're having to match the stain colors of the new woodwork to what is existing in the room. We are spending a lot of time doing test stains, samples, trips to Lowes to buy more stain, not to mention trying to actually find all of the different pieces we need. Our baseboards are made out of two pieces, plus we needed shoe molding. We decided that easiest (so it seemed!) and least expensive solution to our baseboard dilemma in the office was to buy one new matching bottom half for the wall that has nothing, and then replace the top piece all around the room. We cannot find a new matching top piece, and the custom mill option isn't worth the cost for the little bit we need. Then, we can salvage the top pieces to use elsewhere in the house as needed. This is taking some time, but we're working and moving forward. Mike also re-wired the outlets in the room over the weekend, they were previously mounted on top of the baseboards and we wanted them recessed. Last night we installed the shoe mold. The pictures are from over the weekend, we've done a little more since then, I just haven't taken new pictures...We had to removed the old baseboards and cut 1/4" off the bottom because the tallest shoe molding we could find was still not tall enough to cover the darker stained portion at the bottom (previously covered up by carpet). You can see what I mean on that little piece at the bottom left of the above picture. Then we had to attach some blocking in a few places to have something to reattach the baseboards too.

Um, yeah... This is probably not how you're supposed to do electrical work... We were also working on cutting down the show molding.

Reese and Cooper were helping. Like the new rug?? I found it at Lowes, it was in the clearance section, originally $75, reduced to $25. Yay! It has a black border around it, I think it will look nice with our darker office furniture.

We need to get a lot done this coming weekend, we have some visitors coming in a few weeks and I want to have the guest room done so they have someplace to sleep! We're planning on finishing up the office this weekend (finishing the baseboards and installing the crown molding) and then start moving all of the furniture and boxes out of the guest room so we can start to work on painting, etc.

Last weekend I were planting grass seed while wearing shorts and a tank top. It was in the 60s/70s all week. This morning we woke up to this:

and I thought Ohio's weather was crazy!

PS - any thoughts on the new blog layout? I don't think I like it... I don't like how the archives and the "about me" stuff is all at the bottom. I do like how the text is wider and how I can post (potentially) larger pictures. Don't be surprised if I keep working on it :-)

I am in the process of updating the blog layout, let me know if you have any thoughts :-) We'll be back to normal posts soon...

It was beautiful in stl over the weekend, mid 70s, sunny, with a slight breeze. So beautiful that we decided that we shouldn't waste the whole weekend working inside. We decided to work on the yard... we have no idea what we're doing. For some reason landscaping and grass seed and trees really kind of intimidate me. I feel like you could spend a lot of money just hoping what you're planting will actually grow. It probably doesn't help that I seem to be really good at killing house plants.
But we decided to just go for it and see what happens. Luckily the woman who works in the garden department at Lowes was very nice and helpful. We wanted to start with planting some grass. About 1/2 of our yard is just dirt and dead weeds. See how sad Reese looks? He wants more grass to play in.

We decided to work on sections of the yard at a time, so that the dogs could still have a place to play. The first thing we did was block off about 1/2 of the yard from the dogs. I was in charge of putting the stakes into the ground. For some (great!) reason, the dogs really respect any kind of barrier, even if it's only a foot high, like the stakes and orange tape. Then, Mike and I started raking up the weeds and the dirt. That is hard work! We put down 2 giant bags of grass seed, and we've been watering it twice a day, per the instructions on the bag. I really hope this works. Many of our neighbors were outside over the weekend and asked what we were doing. Based on their responses when we said we were trying to grow grass, I'm thinking that it is very difficult to do in this area... Our neighbors (the yard that you can see in the above photos) have 4 dogs that live outside, so that's why they have no grass. We can't really use their yard as a good comparison. You can see how their dogs have worn a path along the fence and around their pool.
Come on grass! We should start to see grass in 7-14 days, I'll keep you posted.

We also painted the office! I love the color, we went with whole wheat, it's 2 shades darker than the antique white that we have throughout the house.
We're still working on the baseboard situation. We are also going to have to install crown molding in this room because whoever did the drywall work before did a horrible job. There are huge gaps along the ceiling.

I forgot to post a picture last week of the new rug we got from Ikea. I felt like our entry needed something. Well, something besides the new door, floors, and fixed stairs... I can't wait for those projects.
I really like how it looks with the light fixture. Hm, now that I see this picture, we really need to do something about all of those cords under the hall table! And we can probably put away some of our winter coats...