Living Room Molding: Part 1

Mike has been working on the electrical upstairs, it's a big time consuming job. So I've been trying to stay out of the way. Should I be working on the bathroom window? Yes. Am I? Of course not. I'm working on the the wallpaper and molding in the living room! Who needs privacy in the odd shower window when one can do frivolous decorating? Exactly.

I wanted this to be a complete post about my finished framed wallpaper feature, looking beautiful on my living room walls. It's not from lack of effort - our new nail gun we bought from Home Depot (that came highly recommended by the "salesman") turned out to be a glorified staple gun. BIG FAT FAIL. Shame on us for not reviewing the box more carefully, being taken in by his enthusiasm ("It will do molding AND upholstery AND tack electrical wires AND a woodworking!"), and being in a rush to get to Target. Needless to say, it's being exchanged today for the one we should have gotten in the first place that does real nails.

Let's review our process so far and I'll leave you with an "exciting" cliff hanger for Part 2. Last weekend I taped out several size options for the wallpaper on "largest" wall in the room (which is quite small since we have stairs, 2 windows & 4 doorways). My plan was to frame (with molding) a square of my wallpaper to coordinate with the wallpaper already put up on the wall below the stairs. I like the idea of adding more architectural detail to the room and being able to change the paper easily when I'm tired of it. I also wanted to add a corner piece of molding to the wall under the stairs to complete the frame around the triangle of wallpaper to give everything a nice finished look.

Seeing the sizes and shapes up in painter's tape, we were able to narrow the choices down to our preferred size (12" from the door frames and ceiling, 32" off the floor) and get the right lengths of molding from Home Depot. Monday night we mitered the corners of the molding with our fancy new mitering saw that we got deeply discounted at Sears. Pros of our new craftsman mitering saw? With that laser level and all the bells and whistles, the ends were cut to angled perfection in a matter of seconds. Cons? It took over an hour just to learn how to turn it on with a giant manual that's at least an inch thick to review all those bells and whistles.

Wednesday night I painted the molding a crisp glossy white to match our living room trim and conned my mother into coming over to help me hang the wallpaper (because I still don't know how to do that very well), which was going under the molding. We put up the paper 1/2" wider around all the sides to give me some extra wiggle room when hanging the molding, and we placed the paper thoughtfully so that there is a bird in the center at eye level when you walk in the door. I love those thoughtful details, none of which I would have ever thought of on my own, but they really help make everything look better. 

Of course last night was the whole installation debacle, so stay tuned for part 2 with the finished product.