Painted Master

I finished painting the master bedroom last weekend. The color is a neutral, historic color. It changes tone quite a bit depending on the time of day and type of light. At times it has a tan or taupe undertone; at others it has a green or olive note.

Throughout the week I've been re-installing the roman shades, drapes, furniture, etc. Compare to the pictures from a previous post. We recently found the chest of drawers at a local antique shop. It's a lot of fun to find things one at a time. Then everything has a story and some history.

The bench and chaise we had before and we had them re-upholstered. They look fantastic!

Connections

Some might remember the TV series Connections with James Burke. The one where he connects seemingly random events - sort of like the Challenger disaster being related to the width of two horses' behinds in ancient Rome.

Likewise, I finished painting the master bedroom this weekend. Naturally, it involved doing some demolition in a pantry closet in the kitchen...

So I wanted to paint the master bedroom this weekend. I filled the minor holes and cracks in the plaster and did other prep work. Then I remembered(!) that the cable TV enters the house through and outside wall in the master bedroom. Yup, just like the old phone lines, the CATV is run from the pole to the outside of the house. The splitter is on the exterior and the various lines run along the outside until they reach the room where they're needed. Then they drilled through the brick and let the end of the cable dangle into the room.

The main one comes in near the ceiling in the master and has about 40 feet of extra cable. The loose cable runs along the master bedroom floor and into the room next to the master bedroom...

Needless to say I wanted to do this right by running the cable through the wall cavity and having proper CATV outlets so that I could patch the existing holes before I painted. I also wanted to get the CATV run from a real main distribution point, just like the new phone lines.

So up in the attic I go to find a way to chase the cable down to the basement. I found the plumbing stack that runs from the attic through the master bathroom and through the kitchen on the way to the basement. However, the stack is hidden behind some plywood in the back corner of a pantry cabinet in the kitchen. It's nothing a little sledge hammer won't cure. ;-)

As I'm demolishing, my father-in-law calls. He asks She Who Must Be Obeyed, "What's all that noise? I thought you were painting the master bedroom?"

She nonchalantly replies, "We are. And to do it we need to tear some stuff out of that pantry in the kitchen."

He mumbles acknowledgment, but knows better than to ask for clarification...

So I ran the cable down the chase and fished a cable down into the wall in the sitting room. I hooked everything up and...

Static.

I should have known that we'd get interference from the power feed to the electrical sub-panel in the attic. You can't run high and low voltage close together and parallel to each other.

After a little head scratching, I remembered that we chased PEX up from the basement for the laundry room. I re-cut some of those holes, chased the CATV up through those walls, hooked everything up, and...

STATIC!

More head scratching and a little figuring. Oh yeah, this run is on the long side. So off to the home center to get a signal amplifier.

Works like a charm.

And then I could fill the old holes and paint the master bedroom.

Beige. I think I'll paint the ceiling beige...

That's how She Who Must Be Obeyed greeted me this morning. It's a punchline from an old joke, buts it's somewhat appropriate.

A long time ago, She Who Must Be Obeyed removed the fabric covering the ceiling in a couple of rooms. The fabric was falling down on its own, so it needed to come down. The plaster underneath was in surprisingly good condition in most places, but it was a little discolored in some spots and had never been painted. I filled the cracks and repaired in where necessary, but didn't paint it. That's this weekend's project now that the woodwork painting is done.

I've already primed the bare plaster today and will be doing some more prep in the other bedrooms this evening. Tomorrow it's ceiling white rather than beige...

Finished Millwork

Wow! Luke's painting of the woodwork is fantastic!

Here are a representative before picture (some windows were worse!) and after picture.

Now I'm on the hook for the next bits of work...

Painting the Millwork

Luke has been over all last week preparing for painting the millwork we installed. He's filled the gaps, cracks, and places where the surface was uneven. He's primed the bare wood, some old and all the new moldings we installed. A couple of the rooms already have a first finish coat applied. He's spraying the paint so that we have a nice smooth, hard finish. He has everything tented, bagged, taped, or covered so paint goes only where it's supposed to.

It's looking fantastic!

The Steam Box

Every once in a while you have to channel MacGuyver...

This is the steam box I fabricated. It's just a couple of pieces of PVC pipe. The inside diameter is a little bigger than the molding we needed to bend, but I should have gone a little bigger so the steam circulated easier. There's a cap at the far end to let the chamber fill with steam. The far end it also higher so as the steam cools, the water can run out and down the drain. The 2x4 is just there for support - the PVC starts getting soft as it gets warm. ;-)

Then we just needed a way to fill it with steam. I found some vinyl tubing that fit the outlet on the steam source and the other end was inserted into the PVC pipe.

Don't tell my mother-in-law, it's her clothing steamer...

Nemesis

After much trial and error over the past few weeks (did you think we were just messing about in those other rooms? ;-), tonight my dad and I finally finished the base shoe in the master bedroom. The big problem was bending the molding along the curved wall.

We tried wrapping it in wet towels overnight. Didn't work.

We tried back-cutting notches along the back side of the molding. Sort of worked, but the top of the molding kept wanting to roll over.

We tried steaming it in a fabricated steam box. That also kind of worked.

Finally, we did a little of each and added a new wrinkle. Back-cut the stock, steamed it, and then put it in a form and let it dry for a couple of hours so that it would hold its shape while we worked it into position.

Of course, the room and curve aren't really symmetrical (and half of the curve is *slightly* larger than a 4x8 sheet of plywood), so we needed to custom make the form for each half of the curve...

"The Doors Don't Match..."

So says She Who Must Be Obeyed.

After some discussion about what *exactly* that meant, it turns out that it means the top panel of the mirrored door isn't the same height as the top panel of the other door. Since nothing is impossible for those who don't have to do it...

My Dad and his friend Frank came over one day this week to flip the door over. The other side of the mirrored door has the matching panel layout. Because we wanted the door to swing the same direction, they had to mortise for the hinges on the opposite edge of the door, mortise for the latch box, and fill the old mortises with a dutchman.

They did great work; it looks awesome.

"A Portal to Another Dimension..."

After we'd started on the closet demolition, my son said, "Dad, that looks like a portal to another dimension." Little did we know...

Yesterday, we installed the chair rail without much trouble. But the "picture rail" has been a challenge. There really isn't any crown molding in the house, but there is picture rail in most of the rooms. Except this one. We'd looked a number of places to find picture rail to no avail. Well, there are a few places that carry some, but it's either not the right style or it's too small. It's way too expensive to have knives cut and a short run of custom matching picture rail made for the little bit we need. So we found some casing that has a similar profile and we've installed that.

OK, so enough background.

First we tried installing it flush with the ceiling. The ceiling is so wavy we couldn't get any joints to match up.

Then we tried using a laser level to shoot a line around the room. For some reason, when we started in one corner and shot our way around the room, we ended up a half inch off. Now I know that gravity will bend light, but NOT by half an inch around a 12x16 foot room! Maybe this is a portal to another dimension...

Finally, we cut a spacer to measure down from the ceiling at each corner and snapped a chalk line down each wall so we had the appropriate quarter inch gap between the ceiling and the top of the molding in the corners. Everywhere else the gap will just float some.

Now this room is ready for paint.

Closet Doors

We finally got the other door on last weekend. And during the week I've been chipping away at installing the casing and other moldings. Now the exterior is completely done. A few small chunks of base molding are all that remain to be installed on the interior - I'll have those done before my Dad comes over today. Chair rail and crown/picture molding this weekend and this room is ready for paint as well.