Last weekend, Sue painted a good part of the kitchen. (See Now Sparkle.) It looked a lot better, but we wanted to add some sort of woodwork to the walls and under the cabinetry, since there was nothing there but old glue. Remember?
To do this well, we had to get a new saw. I haven't bought a new power tool in a while, and I figured, I could borrow it from Jonathan or Chris, but this is a very handy tool and I'll need it for fixing up the basement (and most other wood-related projects I tackle in the future).
A miter saw does three/four useful things...
...it chops down, so you can secure a plank and ensure a nice perpendicular cut across the grain of the plank. It can cut at an angle across the width of the plank - think of a door frame and how the piece across the top meets neatly at a 45-degree angle with the pieces that run down the sides of the door opening. It can also cut at an angle across the depth of the plank, which is what we wanted to do, to have two pieces of baseboard meet evenly at the 90-degree angles in the various corners of our kitchen walls and cabinetry.
(The fourth useful thing is that it can cut both at an angle across the width and depth of a plank simultaneously, but that's for some pretty specialized projects I guess.)
Anyway, so we had to measure lots of stuff, and carefully cut lots of pieces of wood. And measure again, and cut again. It helps to have a work bench - which we don't - so you don't have to squat in the driveway a couple hundred times as you're doing your cutting and measuring...
...and measuring and cutting.
Once we got the right lengths cut, then we sanded down some of the ends so they transitioned nicely. Our door frames are pretty thin, and our baseboard planks were more substantial, so they would have jutted out a little bit had we not sanded.
Once we had sanded and nailed the boards into place, we were ready to paint them, but we realized...
... whoever owned the house before had only painted some of the wood paneling in the kitchen. We decided to paint all of it to brighten up the room.
AFTER
It looks a lot better, but if we stay in the house past 2011, we'll likely gut the kitchen and start again in there.
While we were at it, we gave the bathroom woodwork and the woodwork in the side entry a fresh coat of white semi-gloss. Success!
On top of that we had some great dinners with friends, watched some of the track and field championships at Ri Ra downcity on Saturday, and went for a couple decent runs.
Hope you had nice weekends!
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