Cabinet for Chocolate Cookies: How we got an antique cabinet to our house

I found a cabinet with great potential -- just needed a little TLC -- for a great price. There is an antique dealer that brings some pieces to Chinatown near my work. Most of the pieces in his place need extra care, but you just cannot beat the prices. The only problem is that this seller was going to charge us a ridiculous price for delivery. I opted to DIY, with Josh's help of course. As you all know, we own a Toyota. There was no way this was going to fit in our car.

Thankfully our friends, Tom and Wendy, own a truck and they graciously let us borrow it for a couple hours this morning. As a 'thank you,' I baked these great little chocolate cookies. There is a lot of cocoa powder in them so they definitely satisfy the chocolate craving! Last time I got a request for the recipe, so here it is: http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/grammys-chocolate-cookies

Wainscoting! Dining Room Complete

I've been excited for weeks to get these pictures up, but wanted to wait until everything was 100% complete in the dining room.  This was definitely the most time-consuming part of our renovation.  Between Renee, John (our ever-patient friend), and myself, there is well over 100 hours put into this room alone.  But in the end, it was definitely worth the effort.  Here is the final product...

Here are some before pictures:

First, we painted the walls:

Then, we installed the crown molding.  Since we put up two-piece crown, we first ran a 1x2 around the room:

Then we installed the crown molding:

Next, we had to remove the original baseboards.  Similar to bedroom windows, the 90-year-old plaster fell apart.  So, we rebuilt the wall with plywood to ensure we had something to nail the base of the wainscoting to.  Additionally, the baseboards were installed before the wood floors, which meant that they went about an inch below the floor.  That made them a really fun 6-hours worth of work to remove!

Next, we installed 5 1/2' tall plywood around the room:

Then, we ran 1x4's along the top of the plywood:

Next, we installed the vertical 1x4's and 1x6 baseboards:

Then came the 1x4's to trim out the squares in the design:

Next, we took 1x3's and routered two plate grooves in it to make the plate rail.  Having two grooves allows you to place different size plates/artwork on the rail, but keep them at similar angle from the wall.  Then, everything looks uniform around the room.  It took a little more work, but is a really cool custom detail.

Last came installing the shoe-molding, calking (every single nail hole and joint, which was a lot!) priming (4-coats!) and painting.  With that we have the final product.  Here is a picture of some of the details around the outlets and light switch:

And, some final pictures:

The only thing left to do in this room is install the new chandelier.  It should be in by mid-February.  We also have our furniture order, so again, there will be more pictures once it's furnished.

I'd like to take this opportunity to give a huge thank you to John.  He not only made this project possible, but also helped me finish our small bedroom upstairs.  Thank you!

Living Room Complete!

We just finished our living room.  For this room we painted (Rockport Grey), installed two piece crown molding, removed the plantation shutters, and painted all the trim.

Without further ado....

Here are the before pictures:

And a close up of the crown molding:

In the near future we will be installing a new light fixture and roman shades.  Also, our new furniture will start arriving this Saturday (our leather chair!) and the rest will come the end of February.  There will be more pic's once it is fully decorated.  

The Windows that Almost Killed Me

We wanted to install crown molding in our master bedroom, but the window trim was too close to the ceiling.  We had a few options, but we knew the one that would look the best would be to remove the existing trim, cut everything down from 4" to 3" and reinstall it after the crown was up.  Sounds easy, right...

The first surprise was that the window frame was 4" inches wide and had a big gap on the outside edge.  This means that I would have to use some joint compound to fill it in, sand, prime, and paint.

Then, we found out that plaster doesn't survive 90 years.  Basically, the wall was held up by paint and trim.  When I removed both, it turned to dust and fell on the floor.  More joint compound.

With the wall rebuilt, I had to cut the trim down to size.  I then bought new rosettes (the squares the in the corners) that were 3 1/4" and would fit under the crown.  Unfortunately, there was 90 years worth of paint on the trim, so I thought it would be nice to sand it off.  I started with sandpaper - way too difficult.  Then I moved to a dremel tool (6 hours worth!).  That was too uneven.  So, I bought some paint stripper.  That worked great, but because there was so much paint, it turned into this horrible paste that got stuck in the grooves. I gave up after a few hours of trying to scrape it off, and threw it in the alley.  Then, this morning, I decided to give it another try.  I guess sitting in the cold all night made the paste harden and I scraped it off.  Success.  A little sanding and primer and it was ready to install.  I put it up and calked the whole thing.

Thought it was a huge headache, it looks great and was worth the effort. 

Quick Project: Trim-out the Master Bedroom Closets

I decided to finish a quick project today before we resumed work on the wainscoting.  For some reason, when they added the his-and-hers closets to our bedroom, the did not trim the doorways.  Today I tore out the base molding and put up trim.  I then cut down the base molding to size and reinstalled it.  All that is left is some calk and paint.  Once I get trim back on the windows, our master bedroom will be finished!

Before:

After:

Teaser: Crown Molding and Wainscoting

The crown molding is fully installed - nearly 200 feet.  The wainscoting is 80% complete.  Both need to be primed and pained before they are finished.  I'll wait to show the before-and-after and post better pictures.  Until then, I thought I'd post a few teaser photos.  Enjoy.

Two-piece crown molding in the dining room:

Wainscoting (still needs a few pieces to get the whole design):

Merry Christmas, the German way - Springerle!

One of the best Christmas gifts ever was the Martha Stewart Cookie cookbook (Thanks Jim and Erin!) that I received maybe 2 or 3 years ago. Flipping through the pages when I first got it, I came across a beautiful molded cookie: springerle, a German holiday cookie. I had never heard of them before, but they were stunning. When we were in Germany this fall, Josh and I stumbled into a store which happened to sell these special molds.

So this is my first year making springerle! Their key flavoring is anise extract, so they have a slight hint of a black licorice taste. My mom would love these.

Also, making them takes place over a period of two days. Day one is making the dough and shaping the cookies. The cookies sit on a baking sheet for 24 hours (uncovered, unrefrigerated) so that they dry out. They are then baked the second day at an extremely low temperature, something like 220 degrees. Amazing!

The pictures are a little out of order, but you'll get the idea! These will certainly be a Christensen family tradition for the ages.

Project 2: Paint

We have now painted all three rooms that we are working on: dining, living, and master bedroom.  Here are the colors: 1) Dining - Ivy League, 2) Living - Rockport Grey, 3) Master - Stone House.  There wasn't a lot to do other than fix some imperfections with joint compound and primer - except for one big issue in the master that we needed to fix in order to fit the crown molding (details to follow).  This was a lot of wall space, so it took the better part of two days to complete.  Thankfully it is now done!

Dining Room: All the tan paint will be covered with woodwork and crown molding.

Living Room:

Bedroom: this is before we finished. 

The next post will be crown molding and wainscoting.