Project Conservatory

There are so many different things that need attention, and to which I want to give attention on this house, that I often find myself feeling really busy but accomplishing nothing. Even with the success of the interior paint, there have been too many loose ends hanging around for the Conservatory, aka: Dining Room, that I just wanted it finished! So, that's been the focus this week!

It was not only my desire to check off the room as finished, but it was also that I just knew how beautiful the end product would be! So, I wanted to see it in real life rather than just looking at it in my mind's eye!

Here we go!

Knowing this room needed interior trim painted, I gathered all of the rest of the window trim (I think), and I got busy:

Why do some when I can do all?

That task wasn't as tedious as the divided windows, doors and railings. Just sayin'. With that left to dry, I moved back to the house! I was ready to get this going! First, the outside needed painting:

It's back to the scrumptious exterior yellow!

Because this wood is whatever-it-is (I think it's just regular plywood) and not the milled MDF of the main house, which is synonymous with SPONGE, it only took two coats.

My next step was to secure the interior trim around the large, side window:

I was super-proud of this tape job! 😁 It's
actually pulling the freshly glued interior trim
up against the inside wall. Going through
 the windows was just genius in my head!

Then, I went back outside to adhere the only piece of exterior trim I wanted from all of the options that comes with the kit. If you look at a picture of the way it's designed, there are many:

Source

There are pieces near the roof, above the door and trimming the corners. (Ignore the foundation that you already know I ditched.) I decided to only keep the ledge above the door and front windows to give it a little character as well as to afford another place to put Christmas decorations. Priorities. The rest went in the "not using this/does anyone remember what this is for" pile of things.

To help it stick, I bought some emery boards to sand just where I wanted:

This was the perfect tool for the job!
I highly recommend!

I sanded both the house and the back of the ledge. Then, up it went!

And, after sitting for the night, ta-da!

Yes. You see a Christmas Tree there. Just you wait ...!

Back inside, the tape came off of the window moldings, and I got the trim around the front windows and door!

Now, here comes the fun part. Or, the part that almost made me cry. Really, it depends on the moment! BASEBOARDS and CROWN MOLDINGS!

Oh, yes ... Good stuff!

This is the part I was most excited to do because I knew how awesome it would make the room! And, as an added bonus, aka: reward to myself for all of the white trim I've painted, I bought pieces that are already painted!!

Sweet, sweet, pre-painted pieces!

I've never, ever used a miter box and saw, but I saw my Dad do it about a million times. So, I figured I must have learned something.

I simply measured the pieces by putting a piece of paper along the wall and marking it where it needed to be cut. Somehow, this is way, way easier than using a ruler/tape measure. It's much more exact for me. I even figured out which end of the board to cut so the already-painted end could be placed to face the back of the house which is where we look inside. I mean, I was thinking of everything!

After three, very simple and easy-to-figure-out cuts, the baseboards were finished! I mean to tell you, this girl was on fire!!

" 'Scuse me, but just what flavor of humble pie do you prefer?"

Yeah. Don't you know that the crown molding got me. I mean, really, really got me.

I measured the ceiling the same way I did the floor with my no-fail paper method. And, it did not fail me in this process at all. It was the rest of the stuff. I sat and thought through how to cut the angles and, more important, how to place the piece in the miter box to cut it just right because the piece itself is angled. 

Crown molding to the left; Baseboard to
the right.

In both cases, the position of the piece in the miter box is important, but, with the baseboard, there is a definite top and bottom. With the crown molding, you have to be a little more cognizant of top and bottom for the molding to position correctly. This is what really messed with me in terms of how to keep it steady in the box in order to cut it the way that made visual sense to me. That's the best way I can explain something that I, myself, don't really understand. 

I thought I had it all figured out. When finished with the cuts, I expected the end angles to face up. But, mine ...

... faced down. And, that ended up messing with my figuring out how to make the side pieces fit correctly. I'm saying I simply could not figure out how to make this happen. So, I cut my losses, no pun intended, and decided to use this particular piece to experiment and practice to understand just how to do this. 

However, I could not figure it out no matter how many times I tried!

This picture alone represents at least 11 cuts. And, a number of
sighs in between each cut.

After another umpteen cuts, somehow, I happened upon the correct angles! This took hours, by the way. Hours. And, a dinner break. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't really sure how I did it. But, I knew I did. I held the little sample up to the house, and it was perfect. So, I tried it on a new piece. I was so proud! But, guess what ... SAME ERROR OCCURRED!

Ugh!! No matter what, I was not finishing the room that night because it was Sunday, and Hobby Lobby is closed on Sunday. And, the pieces come in a 4-pack. I need three for this room. I blew it on two. You see the math.

I continued to whittle away at my test piece until I figured it out again. What's so hard about this? I don't even know. I really, really don't. But, I got it. Then, I made a little cheater model, if you will:

Isn't it funny how these look the same as the first one I
messed up? Have you cracked the code yet?

These show me how to cut to fit the correct angle. So, if I need an angle on the right side of a room, I use the arrow pieces. If I need an angle on the left side of a room, I use the unmarked angles as they are the ones that line up. (And, if these pieces are lost, someone gets hurt.) I literally put the model piece on the outside of the miter box and then make sure I'm cutting that direction.

My test run on another new piece of molding worked beautifully! I cut it to look like a pro did it! And, then, I used my little cheater pieces to make the side piece before letting the project just sit for the night before I headed back to Hobby Lobby. It was a wee bit painful to be that close to finishing!

Also painful? Literally, on my way to Hobby Lobby, it hit me: The first piece I cut, I actually cut correctly. The only problem was I tried to put it in ... wait for it ... upside down and backward! Simply flipping it over left-to-right and rotating it to turn the angles would have taken care of the whole problem from the beginning:

Same piece flipped and turned. I'm not even kidding.

The really good that came out of this, though, are my cheater pieces because, honestly, I don't really know how I cut the first angles correctly. I honestly don't, so I'm not certain I could repeat it with any consistency. This way, I have the back-up direction, and I don't have to remember how I did it in the first place! There's my silver lining. And, there are smaller spaces that need molding, so most of the one I thought I ruined will get used. Hooray! The moral of the story is to try all of the ways something will fit before assuming the first way is the only way.

So, that was a little painful. But, was it all worth it? Not even a question. LOOK!!

The stairs are just set in there right now as I need to figure out molding for the door from the kitchen first (no sooner would I put those in permanently only to find out uh-oh ... something doesn't fit!). Those are actually cut from the straight set of stairs that comes with the kit for the first floor which I replaced with a curved staircase (we're getting to that!). So, that was the solution there. I like that there's an open space behind them because I'm quite sure a kitty will hang out in there ...

And, remember the Christmas Tree sitting outside? I had to put it in here at least for a little bit:

And, how about we look at it in here from the outside!

I saw it at Target last weekend. It was an impulse buy at the register in the very back of the store where there was no impulsiveness whatsoever. Call this a Must Have. The star is getting a make-over, though, as I am turning it gold. The green glitter of it is doing nothing for me.

Before signing off, here is the before and after of the moldings. These pictures are above, but they're fun to see near each other to compare!

There are more things to accomplish on the house! I think all of those painted white pieces need to be nestled into their places ...!!