The Finishing Touches

I originally wrote this post a year ago but then I felt like I had overdone the floor topic and it stayed in my drafts...until now.  But I have thought about this often, how hard it is to FINISH when you are almost there.  So, since we are right at one year since we finished (and so THANKFUL we did this last year, since it probably wouldn't have happened with a newborn this year!), here it is, just as I wrote it then.  

(Here's a post about the floors and another about the couch we finally bought 2 months after the floors were done.)
 
Our floor project is pretty much done at this point.  As far as home projects go it was one of our quickest with the house torn up for just two weeks (compared to 6 weeks for the bathroom, 6 weeks for the stairs, and almost 2 months for the porch foundation).  It gets high bang for the buck/time because it's the part of the house we use the most (while awake).  We're pretty happy with the results, even if we still can't agree on a couch (and I thought rug shopping was hard...)

We had mentally prepped ourselves for the full day of sanding but then once that was done and the floor was poly-ed, we felt like we were done.

We weren't.

There's this little phenomenon where as soon as you fix up one part of your house, whatever is next to it all of a sudden looks bad.  And in this case it was the trim.

We already knew we'd be putting down quarter-round in the front room and between that being freshly painted and the floors being so pretty, we knew the baseboards really needed some fresh paint.  It might have been quicker than sanding the floors but maybe equally tedious.

It is SUPER tempting when you get towards the end of a project to just give up, take the easy way out, and get things DONE.  Super super tempting.

But we also know we'll feel better about the whole thing if we just suck it up and finish it right (unlike some previous owner who built a WALL on top of carpet.  Presumably because they didn't want to take the time to tear it out?  A wall is a lot more permanent than carpet!)

So we painted 100+ feet of substantial baseboards.  Twice.

We repainted all the doorways off the rooms with new (old) floors.

We repainted the door to Matt's office.

It was a heck of a lot of painting. 

But it was also the right call.

Once everything was painted we still weren't done.  Matt had to cut and install all the quarter-round (which had already been painted too).

Then caulk all the gaps and nail holes.

Then do final paint touch-ups.

But look at how pretty:

I don't have good before pictures of just the trim but just imagine faded/dirty white with plenty of scratches from the vacuum and someone's toys.  

We thought the room looked really nice with just the floor done but then adding all the quarter-round and doing the painting really made it look amazing. 

pre and post quarter-round

Yes, the tv was the last thing moved out of the room and the first thing back.  That was largely because I was also painting our bedroom (the tv's temporary home) on the day of quarter-round installation and we didn't want paint on the tv.  Also, something to do while finishing up painting.  Because painting all that baseboard (twice) gets tedious FAST.

Matt's office got all the same treatment, I realized I hadn't shown much of that!

It never ceases amaze me how much of a difference some fresh paint can make.  Every project impresses me all over again.

Trim is one of those things I don't generally notice but sprucing it up sure makes me pay attention and reminds me that those final steps are worth the time.  Finishing the job right is worth the time.  I've never regretted some fresh paint. 

Now if we could just agree on a couch...