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From the Depths of the Murky Basement...

...comes the results of my most recent endeavor. Staining all of the poplar trim for the living room, foyer and dining room. I took these photos late at night, after the midget was asleep, and I was ready to pitch face forward onto the nearest horizontal surface, exhausted from the top of my head to the soles of my feet.

All told, there is approximately 400 feet of trim down there. To put that in context, let's take the following quiz for all the geeks in the crowd:

400 feet is equivalent to:

1. The maximum distance at which you can use a Wii Remote.
2. The water depth of the Weeki Wachee underwater caves in Florida
3. The height of the East Wall of Lover's Leap in California
4. All of the above

The answer, of course, is all of the above.

• Wii Remote
• Weeki Wachee Caves in Florida
• East Wall of Lover's Leap rock face in California. Watch Dan Osman scale it in 4+ minutes.

And I had to condition all of the wood before I went back and stained it, so picture in your imagination my hunched over figure shuffling along with a brush and a rag for approximately 800 feet in our dark, dark basement.

Pitiful, isn't it?

Why did we have to stain so much trim? Why did we have to use new trim at all? Because the previous owners ripped out the lovely bungalow trim in the living room, dining room and foyer long before we purchased the house. Most of it was replaced by cheap, thin, modern trim (see the last photo in this entry) which made those rooms look strange and out of whack. So we have to put it all back.

We were able to salvage the original trim on the second floor because they didn't rip that out. They just painted it pink. And then beige. So, that required stripping, staining, and shellacking all of THAT trim. No problem. We had nothing else better to do for those two summers.

(By the way, has anyone else daydreamed about traveling back in time while stripping trim? Daydreamed about traveling back in time and visiting the previous owner who began to paint over the trim? Smacking that person upside the head right as they were dipping that paint into the paint can for the first time? Less violence and more of a WHAT ARE YOU THINKING love tap? Is that just me?)

We wish our budget would have allowed us to purchase the tight grained red oak that made up the original trim. But it was not to be. However, since we were staining it to match the other original trim, we were able to get away with ordering poplar. T.K., who is as picky as we are, did an amazing job selecting some of the lovelier pieces from the lumberyard.

Poplar is sometimes difficult to stain because it is such a soft wood and can turn out blotchy. So we carefully conditioned the wood before staining it and it turned out beautifully.

Seeing all of the stained wood is kind of exciting. Soon, we will have a living room. Soon.

Posted by jeanne on March 21, 2008 at 10:50 AM (5)

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