the longest project - but not quite 9 months...

So, I think we get the DIY prize for Longest Project Ever. Our dining room project, which began last year, or 3 months ago (however you want to slice it) is still in progress. Progress being a relative term. But we had a good excuse: two other important projects came up.

The first project came on Christmas Eve, when we got a big fat positive on multiple pregnancy tests and couldn't be happier! Unfortunately, I was soon laid flat by morning sickness and fatigue. We’re now at week 13 and I’m just starting to get some energy and non-nauseated hours back. The couch has become my best friend and enemy, so our DIY speed came to a screeching halt. In my defense, growing a human is hard, you guys! In the first trimester, the kiddo is doubling in size each week while developing all its parts, and while s/he’s too tiny to “feel” yet, I definitely get a punch from the hormone cocktail.

Say hello to our little 'Poppyseed'. The ultrasound tech also found a little surprise.

Ignore the bad brush placement. This little one was too wiggly to get many good shots,
and of course you can only see the arm touching his/her nose.

While gestating is exhausting, it doesn't quite account for all of our time. We also took on yet another little project. We gifted Mike's parents with updating their bathroom!

Mike's folks have been updating their home. They recently put in gorgeous new hardwood throughout the main living areas. So we decided to help a little bit by focusing on the guest bath/laundry room by replacing their louvered doors (like we had in our front hall) with some new paneled ones and then paint the trim. (This is also a totally not-secret nudge to get them to paint the rest of their trim and really make their new floors pop! We are transparent, they're not fooled one bit!) Stay tuned for a potential post on that project, because our collaboration turned out fantastic!

So, while we’ve been slow and I’ve been a couch potato, we weren’t completely out of it.

Back to the our house update: the dining room.

We last left you with this:

Next, up was finding a way to make the wainscoting pop. We wanted to trim-out each inside square so that it matched the chair rail design.

Fun with Trim

The trim went up fairly fast and easy for the simple rectangles, but Mike had a lot of trial and error when it came to the tricky squares with odd angles. He could make templates and test cuts with leftover MDF, but the curves of the trim would throw things off.

Joy after getting the easier tricky part done

We had chosen a trim that had a perfect shallow notch to tuck inside the board and batten. It seemed like the perfect thing to use. Big mistake! As we began to cut complex angles, we realized that the fatter-on-the-inside trim made fitting angles to be a nightmare. This fat-side-in caused the trim to bow out at weird angles whenever we had obtuse angles, like around the stairs.

After countless trial and error, and a huge stack of useless scrap wood, we were able to get a nice tight miter cut for the complex angles. It's amazing how much high-school math trim-work makes you remember.

 

Once the board and batten and trim were up, I went around with some paintable caulk and wood filler for seams, dings, and oopsies. Things seemed smooth to the touch, so we started to prime, and then it became clear that something was up. So, grumbling, we eventually got around to filling again with the wood goop, albeit more aggressively, and with a lot more sanding.

Priming ... and more 'fun'

Then we primed another coat. I felt like we still needed to work on some of the seams and dings before we painted, but Mike was tired of not seeing progress and insisted we go ahead and start painting. Sighing, I pointed out that we’re just going to have to redo this work, but sometimes I think men believe they can re-shape reality to fit their desires. So, I went ahead and painted the first coat, knowing full well this would be one of those “told you so” moments marriage experts warn against.

Sure enough, the gaps showed up under the second coat and we needed to fill the seams again. This time, we got a little overzealous with the wood filler. Although we sanded … and sanded … and sanded … there are a couple of spots you can still see up close that aren’t perfectly smooth. But luckily when you’re just looking at the room casually, you don’t see it. I try not to twitch when I think about it.

Paint time! Finally!

Three weeks later we were finally ready for the wall paint. Even though it’s a small dining room by today’s building standards, we did not want to go neutral. Where else can you have some fun than your dining room? We both loved the look of navy with the white wainscoting but were nervous about going that dark in one of our brightest rooms in the house (this house needs more natural light). We threw up swatches in greens, blues, grays, and browns, testing all these shades against the wood trim and in natural daylight and nighttime yellow glow.

And they pretty much stayed up like that for a few weeks more. I was gestating :).

Mike definitely gravitated to the bottom, darkest swatch on each sheet. I kept trying for a mid-tone blue-gray, but I admit it always felt like a “safe” choice and not the fun times in my head. Brown hues either took on a purple tint in some lights or it looked like food or poop against our trim, so that color family was eliminated. Greens weren’t bad, but we just weren’t feeling them. Deep blues brightened our trim and gave it a rich, not dated luster. But the room had already gone through a navy phase (albeit a dated navy phase), and it had felt dark and repressive. Of course, it had been dark on top and bottom and had heavy, navy curtains. We were going bright white on the bottom, dark in the middle, and lighter up top, and our curtains are a light weave.

Example of a navy dining room

We hemmed and hawed, and finally said, “It’s only paint and time!”

So, we grabbed our old sample of Olympic’s Admiralty from the master bedroom selection days and threw some swatches up on the wall. And we liked it, so navy it would be! But because we are obsessive, I grabbed a bunch of navy chips from different brands and we compared them to Admiralty.

The admiral won. But Mike had to go to war.

Last Sunday was supposed to be a grand day of slapping paint on the walls. Mike went off to Lowe’s to get a bucket of Valspar Ultra matched to Admiralty. I get a call a few minutes later that the paint guy says they’re out, the paint might even be discontinued, try this Valspar Signature, upsell, etc. We had considered trying Sherwin Williams’ ProClassic after using it at his parents’ house (with a coupon), but had decided to stay with the Ultra because it was less stinky, supposedly less VOC, and we’ve got a Poppyseed on board. Just as we were debating whether to switch to SW, Mike sees a ton of Ultra buckets on the shelf and decides he’ll talk to a different paint person. Maybe we got the new guy.

Hoooooooooooours later, Mike comes home from battle. Lowe’s did not have the correct base for our color. So then he went to Home Depot, forgetting that they don’t have a non-Voc brand. Another Lowe’s was out of the right base, too, but he asked them to see if any other store in the area had it. One did. So off he went to get it and my boy wins battles...

And that's where we'll end for now. We're almost there!