I come from a family of train-chasers. My dad, grandpa, and sister Amy can tell you what train is coming down the track just by hearing the horn. We spent vacations parked alongside train tracks and waiting. Waiting for what? Waiting to hear the rails sing before the train even came into view. Waiting to see that headlight blaze through the heat-waves. Waiting to count cars. Waiting to see what line it was, and what they were carrying, and to speculate where they might be going. Sometimes we put coins on the track–a risky enterprise, but my dad always made sure it was safe. We would climb into our car (just in case the pennies ricocheted), and after the train passed we would search through nearby bushes looking for our flattened pennies.
In Pioneer Square in the early 80’s, there used to be a little burger joint called The Iron Horse. We went maybe twice, but the memories are vivid. We sat at a table with a little track running alongside it, and the food came out on a toy train.
I remember a trip we took down south, maybe to Colorado, on a train. I couldn’t have been more than six. The last car on the train had a glass observation ceiling, and we watched the canyons and desert roll out behind us.
Obviously, the glamour of train travel has worn off–a nation once captivated by trains has almost entirely lost interest in them, in favor of faster planes and more convenient cars. Nowhere was this loss of glamour more visible than King Street Station, in downtown Seattle, where I used to pick up my sister Amy on her college breaks from California. Dingy dropped ceilings and ghastly lighting made the train station a depressing place to be, rubbing in the sad fact that most people who ride trains these days simply ride them because they can’t afford something faster. A sign on the wall claimed that King Street had once been beautiful, but years of cigarette smoke had made the ceiling dirty and nobody had the resources to renovate.
For my hubby’s Christmas gift, I planned a trip to Vancouver, British Columbia, with two tickets for the Amtrak Cascades line. Expecting to walk in and see those awful dropped ceilings, imagine my amazement to see a fully restored King Street Station! This is how a train trip ought to begin!
Just look at that glossy ceiling. Gorgeous.
The train ride was lovely; do consider going somewhere by train! Our seats were roomier than an airplane, there was a charming food car with a good selection of treats, and we got a chance to catch up on some reading, with a STUNNING view out the window. Almost the entire trip hugged the coastline of Washington State, with nothing between us and a blue-gray expanse of mist and the Salish Sea. The Amtrak Cascades line goes from Vancouver, BC, to Portland, Oregon, with short stops in between. Although we could have gotten there faster by car, sometimes faster isn’t the point.
Here’s one last bit of train nostalgia for you, courtesy of Curtis Mayfield & The Impressions (1965). Mm, beautiful.
DIY bathroom remodel: what we learned about dry-walling a ceiling
Several resources we’ve been using for information on how to remodel a bathroom agreed upon one thing: cut the holes for your fixtures and electrical boxes first, before you put the drywall up.
However, a video my hubby found on the internets told us to place the drywall first, then cut into it to reveal the fixtures. If measured carefully, the video promised, this shouldn’t cause a problem.
Oh how we rued the day we found that video! After putting the ceiling up, covering the fan and recessed light cans we had previously installed, my hubby started to cut and realized it was much, much more difficult this way.
One of those things we were only to learnthe hard way! I wish there were a way you could learn something before you make the mistake. I tell my students all the time, you can’t make an omelette without cracking a few eggs. But when your mistake costs you two hours of work and a lot of cutting and swearing and sweating, you sure do wish you had paid attention to all the other sources who were telling you to cut your holes first.
One thing I’ve learned about my husband during this ordeal: although I often call him a “big gorilla” in civilian life, for the way he bangs into things and man-handles delicate items, he’s really quite timid when it comes to home projects. For an hour, he gingerly cut tiny little pieces from the ceiling, trying to avoid damaging the precious fan that was hiding underneath. His anger level rising with each passing minute, I took over the project myself, gashing into the ceiling like a medium-sized gorilla, successfully revealing our beautiful fan within a half-hour but also taking out a few sizable chunks of drywall that shouldn’t necessarily have been removed.
No matter, we’ll just tack that onto the growing list of repairs we have to do later!
DIY bathroom remodel: monday’s work
We have a ceiling! And some shower stall walls! None of it’s pretty (yet), but the room is starting to resemble a room!
We were going to hang the ceiling drywall by ourselves, until my bonus mom and stepdad asked, “You’re going to rent a panel lifter, right?” We sort of brushed it off, but then I was talking to my dad about our plans. “You’re going to rent a panel lifter, right?” asked my dad. So we did. That panel lifter just may have saved our lives—at the very least, our marriage. $30 was so worth it. We’re already over-budget; what’s $30?
Our new insulation is, I’m almost certain, going to be infinitely better than our old insulation! The old insulation was half-deteriorated. I have a feeling the new stuff will muffle our neighbors’ water sounds, and keep the room a little warmer.
DIY bathroom remodel: demo: drywall and beer
Two years ago when we re-did our laundry room, we found a little stash of garbage between our studs, left there like a time capsule by a construction worker 30 years ago. We wondered if we might find anything in the walls when we did the bathroom project.
Here’s the answer: a bottle of “BEER,” seemingly straight out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon. In small print on the side, the label says “General Brewing Company, Vancouver, WA.” Looking on Wikipedia, I learned that the beer used to be called Lucky Lager, but then changed to General Brewing Company. I also learned that there was a “generic brand” marketing craze in the early 80’s, exemplified by the BEER label on the bottle we found inside our bathroom wall. History!
It’s good to know the workers who built our home were serious about their jobs.
Now that the drywall is down, and the room is completely stripped, the electrician and plumber will come in to do “rough-ins.” In other words, destruction is done, and construction now begins!
CAULKING TRIM
With my man still in Shanghai, I find I suddenly have the ability to do all the things I don’t think I can do when he’s home. Today, I finally got around to taking down our Christmas lights, a project I considered to be my husband’s domain (why? I don’t know). Yesterday, it was the caulk project.
Ah, the caulk project! We’ve been putting it off ever since we installed new ceiling trim, like six months ago. The steps are easy, there’s nothing difficult about the project, but…we just didn’t want to do it. There always seem to be other things we can spend our weekends doing.
But yesterday I told myself I’m not allowed to do anything else until I make at least some progress on the project.
First, I went around the room caulking all the nail holes. Then I came back around for another pass at the seams between trim pieces. Then I tackled the upper edge of the caulk, making quite a mess in the process because I wanted to see if I could save time by not taping the ceiling. Now I will need to touch up the ceiling paint, a task that, at least in my mind, still seems less tedious than taping.
I did not caulk the bottom edge, because I can’t decide if I need to. For sure, I will need to tape the ceiling and wall, sand the trim (little bits of caulk all over the place), then touch it up with bright white glossy paint.
So I guess in hind-sight I should have taped the ceiling first, because I was going to have to do it later anyway. Oh well, lesson learned! I tried an experiment and it failed, but now at least I know.
POSTCARD: LOBBY AT THE PALMER HOTEL
For Christmas, the hubby and I traveled to Chicago for a friend’s wedding (on Christmas Eve!). I wasn’t sure if the hotel would be nice, but our friend had recommended it, and she has good taste.
When we walked into the lobby, I felt just like Eloise! (You know, the girl who lived in the Plaza Hotel in NYC and got into all sorts of scrapes.)
We had a lovely stay there, sipping champagne and eating cheese puffs, and checking out the Empire Room, where lots of famous people performed in the 1960’s (including Frank Sinatra).
Thanks, Rose, for the lovely weekend; it was a gorgeous wedding!
I posted another photo of the gorgeous The Queen’s Arms pub interior here, but I saved the best for last…
An entire ceiling of wine bottles! I would love to do this, but I don’t have the guts in my own home. I think they used screw-top wine bottles, screwed the cap onto the ceiling (with an actual screw), then twisted the bottle onto the cap. I believe the lighting is just recessed, canned lighting in the ceiling, which gives the bottles their lovely glow.
And if that wasn’t whimsy enough for one pub, they also have a “chandelier” made of wine glasses.
LOVE! (And just look at that beautiful wall of books! I’ve mentioned before my fantasy of having a library lined with rich, leather-bound books. Maybe in another lifetime when I’m a professor or something.)
We installed ceiling trim (moulding) this weekend! I’ve included some before and after pictures below, along with the how-to if you’re willing to try it yourself. I can assure you, even though I knew absolutely nothing about home improvement before we got this condo, trim is one of the easiest projects to do! It’s also cheap, and the aesthetic payoff—a crisp, finished look—is immediate. It’s one of those projects that offers a big reward for not that much work (or technical know-how).
The biggest thing is to get the right tools. We’re lucky, since both my dad and my stepdad/bonus mom are well-stocked and very generous. If you don’t have access to the power tools listed below, and can’t borrow from friends/family, they are easy to rent from Home Depot or Lowe’s.
Entryway BEFORE
Entryway AFTER
Living room BEFORE
Living room AFTER
Living room part 2, BEFORE
Living room part 2, AFTER
Hallway BEFORE
Hallway AFTER
And back to the entryway in one big circle around our ceiling, BEFORE
Entryway, AFTER
DIFFICULTY: Easy with the right power tools
HANDS-ON TIME: 1 hour
TOTAL TIME: 1 hour
COST: About $100 for a bigger job like this (entryway + kitchen + living room + hallway all share one ceiling)
MATERIALS
-Trim for however many square feet your ceiling has; we bought the pre-painted cheap stuff that’s made of some sort of foam, or you could pay more for wood
-Table saw (if you don’t own one and can’t borrow one from a friend/relation, you can rent one from places like Home Depot or Lowe’s, or if you’re really desperate you can use a hand-saw)
-Air compressor (see tips above for acquiring one)
-Nail gun—sounds scary, but it’s fun!
-Nails that are compatible with your particular nail-gun (slanted versus straight, size and type); think finishing nails here, not the big guys
-NOTE: if you wanted to do this the old-school way, I suppose you could use a good ol’ fashioned hammer and some long finishing nails to get the job done by hand?
STEPS (I have not included the steps for caulking the trim; I’ll be posting those steps as a separate project)
1. Set up the air compressor, nail-gun, and saw. Make sure the air compressor has the optimal amount of air pressure. If the pressure is too low (on ours, when it drops below 100), the compressor won’t provide enough push for the nail to go all the way into the trim, so the nail will be sticking out a little and you won’t be able to cover it up with caulk later on.
2. Decide where your first piece of trim will go up. With the saw, we cut our first piece to fit into a corner. We cut the corner-facing edge of the trim at a 45-degree angle with the point pointing into the corner. We cut the far edge of the trim also at a 45-degree angle with the point of the angle touching the wall. In other words, our first piece, viewed birds-eye, looked like a long skinny trapezoid (not parallelogram—these will come later).
3. We used the air compressor and nail gun to nail up the first piece of trim. I do the nailing part (it’s fun!), and I do two or three nails on the first edge, then alternate a nail near the top of the trim or bottom of the trim every foot or so. When I get to the end edge, I again put in two or three nails. After I nail each nail in (about a foot apart), I sort of slap the trim with the palm of my hand. If the trim shifts, it needs more nails. It should be very tight against the wall and not budge when I slap it.
4. For the next piece, we want it to overlap the angled edge as seamlessly as possible (less caulking trouble later on), so the hubs cuts the starting edge of trim at a 45-degree angle with the point facing away from the wall. At the end edge, he cuts it 45 degrees with the point facing along the wall. This piece, from a birds-eye view, looks like a parallelogram.
5. Repeat the nailing process as many times as needed.
6. Repeat the cutting process as many times as needed.
7. When we get to convex corners (such as a wall that juts out from our kitchen), we cut the edges at 45 degree angles with the angle points (vertices) facing outward away from the wall. Whenever we get to concave corners of walls, we cut the trim at 45 degree angles with vertices that face the wall.
Wow, I had no idea I’d be using so much geometry lingo in this post! MATH IS PRACTICAL AND FUN! Oh my gosh I’m such a teacher.
Stay tuned for a how-to on taping, caulking, and touching up the trim for a totally seamless look. This is where my ability to do tedious grunt-work comes in handy! Again, I’ll be posting the steps for caulking soon, as a separate project, so stay tuned!
And send me pictures of your own trim/moulding! Do you have it already? If not, does this post motivate you to do it yourself?
CUP AND PENNY 