Merry Christmas!

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 9:6

From my family to yours, may you have a wonderful and blessed Christmas!

Tis' the season

I haven't been blogging recently because I haven't been working on the house and life has been busy. That being said, I thought I'd take a minute to keep things current.

Thanksgiving went extremely well. We wound up having twelve people over between my wife's family and some neighbors. The dining room was back in shape.

The day after Thanksgiving, we went and purchased our Christmas tree and decorated the house. Nothing makes a house feel like a home like Christmas decorations.
The first Monday after Thanksgiving is deer season in Pennsylvania. My nephew went for the first time with my Dad and I to hunt land in central PA. We had a great, albeit cold, time hunting the elusive whitetail. This was the first time in 13 years that I hunted with my dad. Unfortunately, we're eating pasta this year because one of us missed a shot. I won't say who, but my nephew was carrying around an empty shell casing afterwards. . . 

This past Saturday, my wife's entire family traveled three hours west to meet up with extended family from Ohio at a Bed and Breakfast. We exchanged presents, ate a lot, and had a good time catching up. My sister in law gave me a Porter Cable pin nailer to work the moulding in the dining room!

Coming home from this trip, another snowflake shut the roads down. I miss upstate NY.

This single snowflake. . .

. . .Can render the entire Pennsylvania road system unusable. 

There was some minor snow on Friday, with barely a coating here. By Friday evening, the roads had iced up and our evening plans to see our nephew sing in a concert were cancelled. PENN-DOT's road maintenance strategy seems to be wait until things warm up.

Saturday morning I returned to the Dining Room project. I had the remainder of the chair rail to get up, followed by the finish work, and painting. By early afternoon, the chair rail was installed and I had caulked the gap left between the wall and the moulding.  

My wife came home with a gallon of trim paint that matched what our builder had used. I had never heard of Duron paint before, but it seemed to go on well. We then painted the chair rail as well as the lower walls with the white trim paint. This morning I got up at 4 am, and after getting coffee found myself finishing up the touch-up work above the chair rail.  

We still have to paint the upper walls with the faux color and also install the decorative moulding below the chair rail. With Thanksgiving right around the corner however, the completion of this project will have to wait until after the holidays.

Incidentally, our family pet has settled in quite nicely and does a good job pulling sentry duty.

Planning, Planning, Planning

Today was spent taking care of my youngest who had a bad headache, watched the Eagles struggle to a tie to the 1 win / 8 loss Bengals, and figured out the picture moulding details. I used Google's SketchUp to create some quick plans which allowed me to visualize what things would look like.  

Once I had the plans drawn up, I used some blue masking tape to transfer a couple of squares to the wall to ensure everything looked correct. I'm glad I did this as I tweaked a couple of things.
I have a day off tomorrow due to having training this coming Friday and plan to start installing chair rail. With about 200' of picture frame moulding, that part of the project is bigger than I first thought. I'm thinking I'll get the chair rail installed, get things painted, and restart the picture frame moulding project when time permits after the holidays.

Kitchen - Done, Living Room - Done, Dining Room - Not So Done. . .

Well, we got past the paint mix-up (pun intended) and repainted the kitchen accent wall.  This is the first color we've done where we are wondering if we should consider something different. The color blends well with the counters and other walls, however we're not sure about how it goes with the cabinets.  I'm planning on tiling the backsplash in a couple of months, we'll revisit the color then.

Thursday afternoon and Friday we prepped and painted the living room and the upper walls of the dining room. There were a lot of nail pops in these two rooms, which I had to repair before I could roll the paint on.  Both rooms were painted the same color, Mesa Tan. Depending on the light, this color looks either very close or much darker than the Ligioniers Tan in the foyer.

Our living room sofa will soon be retired to the basement "game room," the game room presently being nothing more than a place where we have a TV and the kids video games set up. We also rearranged the living room to create a space for my daughter's harp.

What still remains? Chair rail needs to be installed next in the dining room, afterwhich the upper walls will receive a second color wash.   One snag: Friday afternoon I ran out to get the chair rail and picture frame moulding.  Unfortunately, none of the local stores carry the trim for the picture frames, which means a delay of least a week to special order it. It's gonna be a close call to have the picture frames installed for Thanksgiving.

Stirred, not shaken

I took two days off this week to get some painting done before Thanksgiving.  Today was to paint the two kitchen cabinet walls.  Problem number one showed itself as soon as I opened the paint container.  The container had not been shaken at the store where I had purchased the paint.  As the color is a deep red, I stirred and shaked it for a good 20 minutes before things looked uniform.  

The cut in work took several hours after which we started to roll the paint on.  Problem number two - rolling the paint on revealed that it still wasn't mixed well and would occasionally show streaks of the added pigment.  We wound up having to take the paint back to Sherwin Williams to have them mix it with their machine. Upon getting back, we rolled on the first coat and found that the mixing changed the hue slightly from what was cut in.  We'll have to mask everything off again once things are dry and repaint tomorrow.

Mom said there would be days like this.

Foyer Painting - Part 2

Saturday we picked up where we left off, rolling on the paint from Friday's cut-in work. I worked the second floor portion of the foyer from an extension ladder. My wife then painted the lower portion while I worked the second floor landing. The landing received an accent color, Oak Creek.

By the end of the day, we had two coats of paint on the main portion of the foyer and one coat of Oak Creek on the landing. I'll apply a quick second coat of Oak Creek today. 

One thing that made painting the foyer manageable was using a Wagner power roller. This tool pumps the paint into the roller, eliminating the need to use long extension poles or climb up and down to dip the roller in a tray.  The only downside to the tool is that it takes about a half hour to clean all the parts.

In other family news, my son received a set of braces this past week. He had oral surgery two weeks ago to pull some baby teeth in preparation of his receiving the braces.  He got a cheesesteak the night before, the last he'll be able to bite into for two years. . . 

Next up is painting the accent wall in the kitchen and then move on to the Dining Room and Living Room.  I was going to tile the kitchen backsplash before painting but have decided to hold off on that for a while.