Craftsman project weekend

We spent a lot of time this weekend in the oft-neglected older half of our house. For those just coming in, our abode is a bit of a Frankenhouse, with a big 1999 addition with master bedroom, great room, and garage added onto a Craftsman cottage that started out around 1916 and grew over the years into a five-room house. Unfortunately, we hadn’t spent a lot of time on the original portion of the house since renovating the bathroom, and there was a lot of work still left undone.

This weekend we started to reverse the process. Yesterday Lisa’s dad and I measured and cut the baseboards that we never got around to adding to the newly remodeled bathroom. Today, Lisa and her dad primed the cut ends of the boards while her mom and I started scraping and applying caulk and spackle to various nail holes, cracked boards on banisters, and so on in preparation for painting on the old porch. I also ran to the Home Depot and found that the most economical nailgun for applying molding was an electric model that I bought for about $10 less than I could have rented a pneumatic model and air compressor.

So tomorrow night is cut out for me: popping moldings into place with a nailgun, a little touch-up paint, some caulk, and the bathroom is almost all done. Just some trim to go over the doorjamb and we’re set. Heaven only knows when the paint on the porch will be done.