Me: I’ll take “Things I Should Have Finished A Year Ago” for 200 Alex. Alex: This step was a critical step missed when the then office and now craft room was renovated. Me: What is poly the trim? Alex: Ding ding ding…we have a winner!
I know Alex doesn’t say that but it makes for a better opening paragraph so I’m going with it. And yes, when we finished…well…kind of finished the then office and now craft room renovations, we failed to poly any of the trim. That includes window trim and the baseboards. It’s been over a year since the trim was installed and stained. And then we added this luxury:
And yes we consider a door to this room a luxury since we went nearly two years without one. The door may be stained but it also lacks poly while the trim lacks both stain and poly. I have to admit, we’ve neglected the poly step in this room because we have a SERIOUS problem with not finishing projects. Enter “2012: The Year Of The Nagging Project” proclamation that we made back here for one of our New Year’s Resolutions. Finishing up the trim in this room is definitely one of those nagging projects that we need to tackle.
And yes, I made myself a little quick and dirty logo for nagging project motivation. I figure the more nagging projects I complete the more I get to use the logo. Cough cough…dork…cough cough. But back to the trim. It was a regular stain and trim fest at our house this past weekend. Not only did we work on the floor in the hallway back here, but we also worked on the soon to be craft room. To start the little must-finish-the-trim project, we went with our usual nail punching in, prepping the trim for stain song and dance.
Since we were staining the trim we made sure to use stainable putty. Very important so you don’t get weird, oddly colored splotchiness going on with your trim post staining.
Oh…and with all the trim that we’ve stained, I’ve finally had a little “a-ha” epiphany moment. I got a little thrifty and recycled a yogurt container to hold my stain so I didn’t have to cart around a gallon sized container of it ackwardly. I was so proud of myself. If I was a Girl Scout I totally would have earned a badge or something.
While I waited for the door trim stain to dry I got to work polying away at the window trim and the baseboards.
We opted to use an oil based, clear satin finish polyurethane made by Minwax.
I didn’t really want to have super glossy trim in the room, especially since I stupidly painted this room in a glossy wall paint. Hand…forehead…doh! What can I say? This was one of the first rooms we painted and I didn’t really know any better back then. The room is a little glare-ie but I have zero desire to repaint it anytime soon. It’s fine for now, until the day we decide to redo the room altogether. So off I went, polying away at the window trim and later the baseboards.
The poly process is an important step in staining and protecting wood. Not only does the poly provide a protective barrier, but it also helps liven and brighten up the color. You can kind of see it in the picture below. The strip on the window sill closest to the window has a coat of poly on it and the strip farthest from the window is just stained.
See the difference? The section with poly definitely brings out the rich, dark walnut color of the stain. So I layered on two coats of poly on all the window trim, baseboards, door trim (inside and outside the room), and door (both sides). It took awhile, wasn’t the most glamorous of jobs, but it needed to be done. I’m so happy with the results but mostly I’m pumped to have checked off one of those nagging projects from my never ending list.
One of our themes for the house is to mesh glossy white trim, with stained wood. Our living areas of the house combine the light gray walls with lots of glossy white wood. But upstairs the plan is to combine the same light gray walls with the dark walnut stained trim. I know it’s a little odd but that’s the compromise we came up with since I’m a glossy white trim kind of gal and Colby loves him some wood. The cohesiveness between the two trim styles would come from a consistent wall color throughout the downstairs and upstairs. I was a little nervous that the wall color would clash with the trim color, since this was our first pairing of the two, but they seem to be working out just fine. I think they’re going to become great friends.
So now the craft room trim is finished….truly finished, leaving one very empty room. Since the room is so small I moved everything out of the space except for the couch so I could more easily access the baseboard.
Now we just wait for all the trim to dry and for the poly to cure up and get nice and hard (that’s what she said…sorry Mom…just couldn’t help it). Then it’s time for the fun part…moving in and organizing! I can’t wait to dig out all of my craft supplies! I can’t believe my glue gun has been banished to the basement. It’s time for that puppy to make its triumphant return!
I should also mention the flooring in this room. I’m always talking about how someday we’ll have wide pine flooring throughout our whole house. This room sports that wide pine flooring. It’s the only room in the house we’ve installed the new flooring and we absolutely love it! Someday we’ll have consistency in flooring in our entire house but that will probably one of the last projects we completely finish. Until then we have precisely 1,287 nagging projects to finish.
Pssst…One nagging project down and many more to go! What about you guys? Are there certain projects or tasks in your house that you just can’t seem to ever tackle and constantly put it off “until tomorrow”? We can’t be the only ones!
