What? Productive Progress?

It’s hard to describe how good it felt to have a productive day at home working on different aspects of the basement.

Ron started out today by settled the fireplace plumb so that it interfaces with the wall at the right angle. Then he cut, installed and stained the last few trim pieces around the tin ceiling and the beams.

I guess I should back up and say that while I was away Ron built the fireplace enclosure. Although it isn’t his favourite thing to do he then hung dry wall, mudded, taped and sanded it all.  
So that meant that this morning I was ready to prime. I had some left over tinted primer from the ceiling tiles that I chose to use. It’s a dark brown but I’m not concerned about final coverage as I suspect the paint colour will be quite dark. I love that first coat of colour and this went on very well for being a primer.  

Now I need to back up and say that about 5 years we painted the other wall as the feature wall. It’s a deep red but now that the fireplace ended up opposite it the colour isn’t going to work. So I will switch it back to the Khaki Green colour of the remaining walls. I would have completed that today but I didn’t have much paint in that colour so just did the cutting in.  

 Now to decide on the colour for the fireplace enclosure. Our original plan was the deep red but we feel that we need to source the tile first. We got out the carpet tiles today (which we bought 5 years ago!) to have a look at those colours as well. I fell in love again with the deep green trim ones (which in the photo looks black but isn’t). Ron did a fairly extensive on line search last night for tile. We will continue the search in person so if you have any ideas a lot where to look for 2 x 6″ glossy antique looking tiles let us know!  So once I had finished painting there was time left to commence on the next phase of the project. Time to tackle the mantle and see how that glossy black spray paint would come off. I’ll let the pictures show the progress.  

Good thing I started on the easy posts first as the mantle is significantly more intricate and must of had two coats of the spray paint. By the time I finished round one my arms and shoulders were ready for a break! Plus I have misplaced all of the little files that we use for fine work in the crevices so it was tough going without the right tools for the job.

It’s a very soft wood and as of yet we haven’t been able to quite figure out what it is. It’s quite easy to sand hard enough to get off the paint and the previous stain and down to prime wood. It’s also very easy to over sand so on the complex portions I switched to using a stripping gel. It’s time consuming and messy but it will work so it will just mean a bit of time put into it.

I usually end a blog post with an outdoor artsy kind of photo. I did actually manage to find something but I am struggling to find a name for the update. The guideline is to find something catchy, a bit mysterious and short but perhaps it might just end up as Enter Title Here — which is what Word Press prompts in the title space. Pretty lame hey?

Bernie