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The Wood in the Basement

(So there were some very, VERY close answers in the comments section of this post. But this is not baseboards or window trim. Read on for the specific details!

Yes, piles and piles of lovely lumber. Poplar, to be exact. And what will it be when it is finished? Well, let's take a small trip back in time and all will become clear...(insert time travel and fade out noises here)

Once upon a time, a long time ago, our bungalow had lovely woodwork in the living room, dining room and foyer. Old growth red oak trim that encircled each room, underlined each window and framed each doorway. It probably looked similar to this:

(Photo from Bungalow Nation)

But without the nice tile work above the fireplace. Yes, the trim extended around the perimeter of each room. Now? Not so much.

When we purchased the house, previous owners had removed the gorgeous woodwork from those three rooms and had replaced it with cheap modern moulding. The effect was similar to drawing on a Monet with a magic marker. Unfortunately, the defacing did not look as cute or quirky as Joan's Monets.

Here is a picture from 2003 that I took of the trim above the dining room windows. So sad. Like the room has been scalped. Awkward. It's like looking at Britney Spears after she shaved her head. It just LOOKS like something should be up there.

The only room to have survived with the woodwork intact was the sunroom at the very front of the house. Here is an old picture of that from Christmas 2005. Please ignore the large pregnant woman in the photo. Nothing to see there. But the bright pink paint above the trim? That's festive, isn't it? Yes, a few entire rooms in the house were that color. No. I have no idea what that was all about.

So, we are putting it ALL BACK. Yes. All of it. At the expense of, well, I don't want to think of it really. Due to budget constraints, getting our hands on some very tight grained red oak to match the rest of the house was far out of our reach. Some T.K. hand-selected poplar will do the trick, provided that we carefully sand out the marks from the planer, condition the wood before we stain it to prevent blotches, and treat it with kid gloves until it is finally up on the walls.

So that picture from last week? That's just the first pile. There is a lot more down there.

I'm going to spend quite a bit of time with the palm sander and hopefully will emerge from this experience with some buff biceps and a restored bungalow living room and dining room.

Free time? What's that?

Posted by jeanne on February 11, 2008 at 4:25 PM

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