The Burrow : 192 feet of Trim

The house had basic brown trim. Not very big. We both really like wide trim and crown moulding. Well the moulding will have to wait due to budget constraints but we did the trim throughout the whole house. We went to HD and picked out the fattest trim we could find. It was .87 cents a foot. I liked it because 87 is the year we were born. Double points. We got 12, 16foot long trim boards and a pack of casements (I believe there were 10, 12foot boards). Oh and if you didn't know like I did, casements go around windows and doors. We had already purchased new doors and they were to be installed over the weekend. We also picked up 4 sheets of bead board. (This was for the wainscoting in our bedroom and kitchen). Oh and did I mention we bought these at 7am. Ugh. So we loaded them onto the trailer because they were too long to fit in. And went to Belmar. On this particular day David was installing hardwood upstairs while my job was to paint all the trim, all the casements, all the doors (3), and all the bead board. My tools included my pro sprayer 5.5, bavarian creme paint, floetrol, roller, several drop cloths, 2x4's to prop things up, water, and the jambox. First thing I did was to construct a painting station with drop cloths and 2x4's. I had to make sure paint didn't get everywhere and that the object could be elevated so I could get the sides in one sweep. This seemed to take longer than I wanted. Then I set up the sprayer. Now you'd think spraying would be a bit easier. In a way it is but it requires much more skill than brushes. First I have to set up the sprayer...

But my trusty sprayer friend has so may pieces it takes 10 minutes just to put it back together. It's like that humpty fellow. After all the pieces are in place you need to run oil through the machine to lube everything up. You also can't simply dump paint into the canister. First you have to mix it with the correct ratio of floetrol. This stuff makes your paint go longer and run smoother.

Ok so once everything was set up it was already 10am. I started spaying. 16 foot long boards at a time. I had to do 2 coats on each one and had to do one at a time. By noon I had finally worked out a faster system, doing 3 boards at once. But the temperature was rising and spraying is not easy. Another quirk to the sprayer is you cannot tilt it. There is a piece on the end that can be pointed any direction but even when it was pointing down, to spray I had to walk half hunched keeping the sprayer straight up and down. You also need to be 4-5 inches away from the object so it was a challenge getting the positioning just right. I believe I finished all the painting by 4pm. David and I expected this job to be done by lunch time...haha definitely not the case.

Finished!

Now for the trim install. I passed the trim off to David. He took 2 days off work to get all this done. Day one was a challenge, his chop saw was too small so the cutting took longer than expected. So that night we went and bought him a bigger saw. It was like christmas for him. I figured I am getting beautiful trim I should agree to the purchase of this new toy. By day 2 the new doors were in, the beadboard wainscot put up, the casements put up, and the baseboards were installed!

OLD DOORS and TRIM (Nasty)

OLD CASEMENTS (BOO)

New Doors Installed

Beadboard Wainscoting in the bedroom

Husband did the wainscoting

Casements and baseboard around the french door

Beadboard on our pantry wall

Beadboard on our upstairs bath

Ah I love my husband! I also loved him because he had me do the next step which was caulk. We caulked every inch of our house. All around the tops of the baseboards, every nail hole, every corner got some caulk in it. So far I vote it's the worst job so far. You have to fill the holes, smooth it with your finger, then wipe off with a sponge, and clean up anything that got on the floor. I do not know if it was the job or that exhaustion had finally set in for both of us and it made caulking seem so much worse.
The last step was to touch up everywhere. So out came the bavarian creme again and with the help of our friend John it only took us 2-3 hours to do all the touch up. No pics of either of these events because we just wanted it done and over with so we never stopped.