Tired of Looking at Doorknobs?

Here is little Cupcake. She is the reason why Little Lantern has been dark for almost 2 months now. This little angel has been keeping us very busy and this lady has found it hard to find a moment to blog when she could staring at those delicious cheeks. She turned eight weeks today, so I decided that enough was enough in my neglect of poor Little Lantern.






Luckily, the house project has continued -- albeit at a much slower pace. You will be glad to know that while I was in the hospital bed in labor, I made J call the flooring guy to confirm that he was in fact coming the next day to stain the floors. I was not about to allow this project to derail simply because we were in the process of experiencing the miracle of life! We needed a home for our little miracle. J didn't take me seriously the first two times that I asked him. He must have thought that I was delirious.
Luckily, the flooring guys showed and did two coats of that glorious ebony. We were a little nervous, but are really happy about how the dark color turned out. Here's a tiny glimpse of what it looks like.


After the floors were done, it was time to tackle the moldings. The lady was in dire need of some dressing up. We ended up going hog wild in the end doing high baseboards which was comprised of two separate pieces, picture frame moldings, door casings with plaster bits in the corners, plaster ceiling medallions, and mammoth crown moldings. Our incredible friend, Pat, was able to do all the carpentry for us. He saved our sorry butts yet again not only because it's done, but because it's done properly. It's really hard to tell from the pics, but here's a glimpse of what it looks like. The photo of the moldings barely does it justice. The floors were immediately covered to protect them from any work that was being done, so it looks kind of odd with the red paper.

Molding Moulding?

I went to Beronio last week to look at moldings for the upstairs. Beronio is like a wood superstore. Molding is yet another thing that I didn't realize that you have to have all picked out even at the framing stage to make sure that you leave enough room for the casings on the doors, the lights switches, plugs, etc. Or if you want to do crown molding or picture frame molding then you need to do additional framing to hold them. Who knew? I certainly didn't.

I took the remnants of the picture frame molding and baseboard that we had salvaged from the original house over to Beronio. Only one room in our house still had original trim and they were in really bad condition, so they had to go. I didn't expect to find the exact replicas, but wanted them along for inspiration in an attempt to keep with the original spirit of the house. I nosed around a bit myself for awhile and couldn't find anything close and was on my way out the door when this crazy guy stopped me and offered to help. His help involved telling me about 10 times how ugly he thought that the original plaster picture frame moldings and wooden baseboards were and that I was basically crazy to try and even get close to imitating them. Instead, he showed me a few other stock items that they had. I finally managed to wrangle myself away from him after about ten minutes feeling rather defeated about my little moldings. 

The next day, I went to Victoriana which is this amazing mill tucked under a freeway overpass perfectly located en route from our temporary housing at Cristina's to our house. They only make moldings and I sighed a big gulp of relief when I walked in and immediately spotted 15 plaster picture frame moldings somewhat resembling ours. I brought my salvaged pieces to the counter and the employees all came over to admire them and tell me how beautiful they were. I knew I was in the right spot. I found some moldings for our downstairs studio which are in the pic above. It's a little more modern and less ornate since the studio isn't exactly original. The upstairs will have a nice deep baseboard moulding for the 10'6" ceilings and more ornate casings for the doors. It's the plaster ceiling medallions that I'm most excited about though.