Fall Projects Edition

Happy Autumn all…it has been way too long since I’ve updated, but I’ve been spending a lot of time working around the house. Ok, ok, not an excuse, I know, but today I’m going to post some pictures of what we’ve been working on around the house.

Project: Emergency Guest Room Revamp

When we moved in, our guest bedroom looked like every other room in the world: white walls, white ceiling, ugly white molding…in other words, pretty much the same as every other room in our house and basically equivalent to a poorly maintained college dorm room.

Since we’re new to this home renovation stuff, we decided the guest bedroom would be the perfect place to start. Why? Well, if we mess up, we won’t have to look at it every day!

So, to start, we pulled off all of the molding around the window, floor, door and closet. (all of which now has a lovely home in the corner of our garage…scrap wood in the Hudson Valley, anyone?) This part is perfect for anyone with any pent up aggression, because you literally get to rip apart the molding. Here is a “before” picture of what the molding used to look like. (Its actually a window in my office, not the guest room, because I forgot to take a picture before we started, but it looked exactly the same)

So, after pulling all of the old stuff off, we took a trip to our local home depot to get some paint and new wood molding. Its easy to find, molding is right in the lumber department, there’s tons of different styles to choose from, if you do it yourself its not that expensive (ours was somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.50 per foot), and you can cut it down in the store yourself. Just be sure, if you do cut it in the store, to leave a little extra — measure twice, cut once. (Mr. Homeownerhelper has been drilling this into my head for months — I really only understand why after doing this room)

I won’t bore you with the details of cutting the molding and nailing it into the wall, but I’ll just say be sure you have extra spackle and sandpaper. You can find the specifics in any home repair book, or leave a message and I’ll post a step by step here on my blog.

So, after many long evenings, a few fights and a whole lot of beer, this is what the final product looks like:

We went for the rosettes in the corners, because its actually easier to make a straight cut where the molding ends, rather than cutting it on the  diagonal, like our old molding was. We did the same around the door and closet. I can’t post the finished room yet, because we haven’t done the floor molding and it, alas, still looks like a war zone.

We chose to paint the room a light green, because its not overwhelming to the senses, and (we think) feels calming. We want our guests to be able to come and relax, so hopefully this color will make that happen.

Total cost for the project, including molding, some tools, wood shims, spare scrap pieces, paint, primer and brushes: a little over $200.

So, what do you guys think — yay or nay? Anyone else doing any home projects – post your ideas in the Comments!

Until next time, have a safe and spooky October — its almost Halloween!