Trimming and Caulking and Painting, Oh My!

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The bathroom is finally wrapping up, and you'll notice in this post that it's actually starting to look somewhat finished. 

After we finished putting up the beadboard, the next step was to put some trim up. We considered adding the old trim back in (which you can see in the image above), but ultimately we decided it would be too conspicuous. We didn't want to break up what would otherwise be a completely white wall.

We found some trim at Lowes that was real wood and already had a notch in it so that it would be flush against the wall and the beadboard. 

First, we measured it and cut each piece to size.

Next, we painted it with two coats of the same color as the walls (satin snow). I didn't prime it because at this point, I just wanted it to be finished and I was pretty sure that since it was untreated, raw wood, it would easily soak up the color.

Then, we brought it into the bathroom and put it in place. Because it was a tight fit and it has a ledge cut into it, it simply sat on top of the beadboard and would hold itself in place.

For the first few days, it wasn't even nailed in, because we were waiting to borrow our neighbor's nail gun. You might notice that, behind the toilet, there is a bit of a shadow under the trim. That's because the wall is curved out behind the toilet, and since the trim wasn't nailed in, it actually  left the wall there for a bit.

Once we nailed it in, we pushed it into place so that it was attached tot he wall all the way around. Since we needed to bend it a bit behind the toilet, we used thicker nails. This left us with somewhat large holes in the trim.

I used leftover caulk to fill the holes. One at a time, I would squeeze the caulk onto my finger and putty up the hole, making sure to fill it. Then, I used a wet rag to gently go over the hole and clean up and remove any excess caulk.

As you can see in the image above, it looks pretty good, but you can still see the holes a little bit.

Once the caulk had dried, I touched it up with paint. This helped disguise where the holes were. Also,  caulk tends to attract dirt, and I didn't want to end up with some dark spots where the caulk was. So, painting helped to solve that problem.

I used pretty much the same process on the corners, using caulk to fill the gaps where there was some darkness visible between pieces of trim.

It is by no means perfect, but for someone who is not a professional and has never really done a home renovation before, I am pretty satisfied with it.

I got a little caulk-crazy and also used it to fill a hole underneath one of the electricity plates. We had cut the hole in the bead board just a little bit too low, so there was a dark area underneath the plate where you could see through to the wall. I filled it in with caulk and then used a flat head screw driver to make lines in it so that it matched the beadboard. Then, I painted it just like the other areas. 

Yet again, it is not perfect, but it is pretty darn close, considering the circumstances.

Lastly, I also caulked where the beadboard met the door trim. Before caulking, this was a dark spot because there was a little crevice there. Now, it's smooth and white.

And that, my friends, is how you trim and caulk beadboard. Up next is some marbley countertop beauty...

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

• Have you ever done trim? Did you find it difficult to cut or easy?
• What about caulking? I had an easier time since everything was white, but if I were trying to caulk something that was not white on the background, I think it would have been awful!

My American Four Square - Upstairs House Tour

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I totally fell off the face of the earth for the last week due to a bathroom renovation that is driving me nuts and eating up a lot of my time.

Forgive me. Pictures coming soon. That makes up for my absence, right?

Now, picking up where the downstairs house tour left off... [If you missed it, click here to read it!]

As you head upstairs, the staircase turns inward and there is a beautiful stained glass window. The clear shape in the middle of this window mimics the mirror above the fireplace.

Stained glass window in stairwell

To the left, at the top of the stairs, is what we are currently using as a master bedroom.

Master bedroom

The floors in the bedrooms upstairs are in pretty poor condition because they haven't been refinished as recently as the downstairs floors. I have mixed feelings on this - it does give the upstairs a nice patina and historic look, but it isn't the most comfortable on bare feet, so we will probably cover any issues with rugs and eventually refinish it.

That said, many of these rooms have wonderful natural light. This part of the city is on a hill, so we are able to get extra light on this side of the house because all of the houses East of us are on lower ground. The natural light is what I love most about this room. It wakes me up softly every morning and makes it easier to get out of bed because there is no avoiding the fact that the day has begun!

There is also a door to the third floor from this bedroom. The door is around the bend to the left, by the window that faces East, and it leads up a stairwell to a well-lit and fairly large third floor that is currently empty.

Office #1

Across from the master bedroom is what my husband is using as his office. It's also on the side of the house with gorgeous natural light, so it will be a great space for him to work in (he works remotely, so he's in there all day). This room has a neat shape, and is very bright and spacious.

Office #2

Next to my husband's office is what is currently my office. It already looks significantly different than it does in this picture (posts coming soon), after a curtain change and a serious case of paint. In this picture, the walls are covered in a textured wallpaper that gives this room more of a beige look which I didn't care for... but the texture of the wallpaper ended up looking very cool painted! ;-)

Guest Room

Across from my office is the guest room. This is a view of the corner where the door to the hallway and door to the closet are. This room was pretty dark, due to some black out curtains, but we have swapped them out to give the room a brighter feel. Still awaiting furniture, which we are retrieving from Chicago this weekend.

And finally... drumroll please... the upstairs bathroom. This has been the bane of my existence for the past week because we are renovating it. The previous owners started the project, but now we are picking up the baton. It looks like one of the owners renovated it quite a while ago and it ended up having a very dated feel due to the wall tile, among other things. 

Stay tuned for a more updated (but still era friendly) bathroom post! 

^Go ahead and wave goodbye to that wall tile because it's not invited to stick around.

:)

My American Foursquare - Empty House Tour, Downstairs Edition

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If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter, you know that my husband and I just spent the last two days moving into a new house! Let the party begin.

One of the things we wanted while looking at homes was something with true character and style on its own - we didn't want a cookie cutter house that we would have to FORCE into having personality. It's totally a personal choice, but for us, it was extremely important to find something that felt significant and had a story behind it.

Here were our priorities when it came to picking a house:

• LOCATION! We wanted to buy somewhere within walking distance to yoga, restaurants, stores, and parks, because we like to live an active and on-foot lifestyle - Major check! Yoga is not even a full block away. I could do a whole post on things I can walk to from my new house, but I'll spare you... for now
• History! We wanted something that was older and very sturdy. - Check! Our new home was built in 1910 and it is considered an "American Four Square" style. It's a 4 bedroom, 3-story house in an historic neighborhood that we love. 
• Original, heavy wood doors - Check!
• Original woodwork, meaning trim, stairway, and built ins are original and have not been painted - Check! I am amazed that in over 100 years no one painted the trim or ripped out the built-in pantry. Thanks to everyone who ever owned this house.
• No carpet anywhere. We just don't like it, it's ugly, and it collects a lot of allergens. If there was carpet, we wanted something with wood underneath it so we could rip it out - Check! No carpet anywhere in this baby.
• Updated kitchen, meaning all or most appliances were stainless, adequate storage, and a dishwasher - Check! Everything but the stove was stainless, and we have already ordered a new stove to replace the white one.
• At least three bedrooms, preferably four (because we want a master, guest room, and at least one office but preferably two offices so that we can each have one) - Check! We have four bedrooms in this house, plus a large third story that will be another room or office once we spruce it up.
• A garage (these are especially hard to find in the neighborhood we looked in, because most of the houses were built before people even had cars!) - Check!

When we found this house, we pretty much knew instantly. We walked through it with smiles on our faces and just had that feeling you have when you find "the one." <--Yeah, it really feels like that, but I'm clearly a little bit dramatic! We put an offer in, and the next day, it was ours. Less than 24 hours on the market.

As I mentioned in my About page (which desperately needs an update), my inspiration to start a blog was YoungHouseLove - clearly a house-related blog, just based on the name. So, I started this blog with a focus on food, fitness, and home. But, I was living in small Chicago apartments and I couldn't do much with them, so the focus re-routed and the 'home' part got a little bit lost. I am so excited to have a place that is mine now, so that I can create an environment that is peaceful and unique and share it with my blog readers. Thanks for being along for the ride!

For now, here are a few sneak peaks of some of the features of this house we are so excited about. 

Original entryway.

Above, you see an image of the foyer and original entryway of the home. I love the full size mirror and the gorgeous antique light fixture that hangs from the ceiling.

Original wood stairway with a stained glass window

Across from the entryway is the original wood stairway. I appreciate the quality and brightness of the wood, as well as the gorgeous stained glass window that lets light into the stairway (more pictures of that coming soon).

The front room

To the left of the foyer is the front room. You walk through original glass french doors into this sitting room, where we plan to place a tufted couch and chaise lounge. This room has so many great features, such as the antique fireplace, gorgeous wood mirror, rustic industrial light fixtures, and the original glass french doors.

Ethereal living room

Through the front room is the living room. My favorite thing, by far, about this room is the bay windows. The combination of soft light and flowy drapes gives this room an ethereal feel, and we intend to juxtapose that with some modern furniture.

Here, we are putting our mid century couch, coffee table, and credenza. We are planning to mount our 60" flat screen on the wall above the credenza. Fingers crossed an old house can handle that...

Dining room

To the right of the living room is the dining room. There is a nice spread of high windows to let in light, but my favorite part of this room is the light fixture the previous owner added. I think it is so unique in this house and really an interesting conversation piece.

You can see through a small door to the top right of this picture - that goes to a walk through coat room that exists between the foyer and the dining room. So, if you wanted, you could let your guests in the front door, bring them into the walk through coat room to hang coats up, and enter the dining room. That coat room also has the door to the basement.

The kitchen is behind the living room. I love the backsplash (it looks off in this picture, but is actually white) and how simple it is, and I have already had a lot of fun playing with displays on those shelves.

At first, we considered adding upper cabinets that were white with glass inlays (which would have been true to this era of house, and also would allow us to keep the current lower cabinets without finding a perfect match). That said, now that we have put things away, we may leave it as is. Feel free to weigh in...

The fridge is unpictured here, but it is stainless and matches the dishwasher. We have a lot of other stainless appliances (Vitamix, juicer, etc) that will sit out, so we want the stove to match. (Hint hint: we already bought it)

The built in pantry

The pantry is between the kitchen and dining room, and this is by far one of my favorite features of the house. I am in love with these built ins - they are just so beautiful to look at, and I love the hardware, too. To boot, it stores an amazing amount of stuff, and is what is enabling us to get by without upper cabinets in the kitchen. I have put all of our things away, and we still have empty cabinets.

There is a skylight in this room as well as a window on the wall, so this pantry has amazing natural light. Get ready for lots of food photography coming at you from that built in table on the right.

Also off of the kitchen is a half bathroom. It is fairly small and simple, but gets the job done. I love the combo of the red door and red lighting. Great job, previous owners. You made our job easy.

Note to my readers... what should I put on those shelves up there? I want something decorative and interesting, because I don't need it for storage.

And there you have it! 

I am half-assing it and starting with downstairs only, because it is taking me quite a while to sift through my photos and pick just one of each room. I certainly could work on this all day, but I really should get back to things like unpacking my house and making myself food and, oh yeah, work.

WHAT ABOUT  YOU?

• What do you do in parts of your home where you place design before function? What kind of display areas do you have?
• Have you ever lived in an historic home?
• What do you think of open display kitchen shelving instead of upper cabinets?