Home Improvement Today?

Whats the best route to go here? Before I moved in I had my kitchen redone and we used some more modern floor moulding with the thought to eventually convert the rest of the houses moulding to the same as time went on. I just built a new electric fireplace and looking to continue this moulding into the living room, but running into some minor issues.

Issue 1: As you can see i have about a 3/8" difference in height as the moulding that was there before sat on the houses slab instead of on the floor like the kitchen's moulding is and then the quarter round was attached which was on the floor. Im thinking I should cut/fit in a 3/8" Thick x 1" W shim to bring it up higher to match floor level of the living room which would make the moulding all sit the same height. But then i still have a gap between the moulding and the floor and leads me to issue 2.

Issue 2: Is it normal to still use quarter round with this newer taller moulding? Only reason i ask is cause the gap from my pergo floor to wall is about a 1" gap (with no moulding) and the moulding itself will not cover the gap entirely. Would quarter round with modern moulding look dumb? or is that normal? What else can I use to bridge the gap that would be left after installing the moulding instead of quarter round? If i do go the shim wood piece fill in route i could paint/stain it to match the floor and maybe that would make it look okay. Maybe i am missing or not thinking of a simpler solution?

If i do use quarter round with this in the living room, is it weird if i dont also add quarter round with it to the kitchen?

 

So more adventures in screwing stuff up today for me. Cleaned up and put a couple coats of amber shellac on the window trim (never had any blinds and had some sort of wrap around curtain thing so it faded the trim) in the bedroom and needed to seal between the stop moulding and window. Whenever they replaced the windows they never sealed it, so cold air just blows right through. Thought I'd be smart and get a similar colored Dynaflex caulking, but it just made a mess, even trying to be careful...





So, the other window I just left what came out of the tube and didn't really do much more smoothing. Came out slightly better...



So, the other windows I'm just gonna get some clear caulking. Thought it would look better, but apparently not. I'll take a razor blade to clean it up once it cures hard. Only nice thing is, you don't see it with the shade pulled down...




I'm done with this project. Just need to finally hang some pictures, but that can wait till next weekend. I never hung pictures yet cause I knew I was gonna paint and didn't want the extra work of filling in nail holes.

 

Shoe (or any small moulding wide enough) moulding is pretty much your only option to cover the gap between the floor and the baseboard trim regardless of what trim you use. It would cover any shim you use to raise the moulding to match the kitchen height. I can't think of anything (other than custom milled) that's more than 1" thick.

 

Afternoon folks, walked to the backyard and saw that my dog got the covered pipes and torn the insulation off so I was inspired by @Oldie2007 and made my own pipe cover… put on flex seal and stuck it in the garage so it can cure..

 

Thanks! I guess that is what I'll have to do then. I don't want to do custom at 1" thick cause I feel it wouldn't look right coming around the corner unless the rest was the same but that's a good point to avoid any need for shoe.

 

You could get creative with the transition if you went with something thicker. Maybe run the new thicker trim with a return to the outside of the kitchen trim. Looks like a threshold is needed to. That'll help with any perceived visual distractions. I've found that most people don't notice things that I spend too much time worrying about....just like something like this.

 

Did you tape both sides off?

 

Yea, I totally should have. Me being lazy again. I've been working on the room since Sunday and have kinda had the shits of it at this point.

 

It takes a lot of extra time but if you want perfect caulking taping it is the only way.

 

Yea, I was rushing it. I had just applied a couple coats of Shellac to the window stool and #324 surrounding trim so tape woulda messed all that up since it was slightly tacky. Lesson learned. Luckily the blinds I installed and the curtain hide everything. Will know better for the other two rooms.

 

Slowly working through this... I got the ceiling and the walls all textured:




Remember how jacked up this wall was? Man... It's way better now.


We'll be getting new doors (haven't decided on a design for them), but for now I finished all of the painting on the walls and on the trim. The walls are painted with BM Signature (Ben) and the trim is all BM Advance in a medium gray tone to match the downstairs trim. I haven't finished trimming-out this space yet. I'll do this whole area and my downstairs baseboards all at once.


Then I moved on to the super tedious task of laying the wood floor in the hallway. I would rather lay floor in a 2,000 sq ft open house than do a tiny hallway like this. I started by making a custom nosing that I had to shim to account for a dip in the subfloor. I wish this task was as easy as the pictures make it seem. This area took me several days with the warped subfloor. Lots of custom cuts to make the gaps close with the floor dips.








From there I started on the stairs. Each tread was made using my old floor boards.


I had to cut the nosings off of the old structural tread (designed for carpet), and then I made finish risers out of simple 1/4" birch plywood. I have a tread gauge that works nicely for getting all of these measurements tight. Risers are painted with Scuff-X.


There is about a half can of PL Premium under every tread + a series of 16 ga finish nails.




I'll need to circle back and do a second coat of paint on the risers and fix up the drywall I didn't pull tight enough during my skim coat.

Then I moved on to the open portion of the stair case. Also known as the bane of my existence.


To start I ripped off the carpet to reveal just how jacked up my drywall is from the carpet nosing. Check out the gore:




The idea was to install some finish risers that looked like they wrapped around the staircase wall. To do this I had to get a little creative. I started by cutting some finish risers to the shape of each structural riser using a jig, then I used some stop blocks to pull the risers flush with the drywall on the end and the tread on top. Prybars helped get it in place snugly while I tacked it.






Then I did 3-4 coats of mud on the sides to make them look like they grew out of the wall. This was tedious to say the least. When all was done I textured the wall side and painted the risers white.






Then I moved on to many hours of making open treads with mitered returns.





Each one was sanded and finished with a satin Poly that just so happens to match my floor finish. I may or may not have ruined a few during install, but finally it came together today and I got them in. My bottom tread is in the clamps still but it fits tightly just like the rest. The biggest concern to me was making sure all of the returns look uniform and the reveals are the same.








Seeing if I passed the test -- all nosings should make contact with a straight bar.


Man I am so over this project. Such a rollercoaster of success and failure. I can't count how many set backs I've had, and am very happy it's nearing the finish line. Quite a bit of relatively simple finish work to do (shoe mold between the riser and tread, trim out the upstairs, second round of paint), but first I'll finally start setting newel posts tomorrow!

 

Wow! What are you using for the stair railing? Wrought iron with wood banisters maybe?

 

Hitting "Like" doesn't adequately pay respect to the staggering amount of high quality work you did there. Wow!

 

nice work bro

a little late for you now but my flooring guy has a good trick for installing drywall to drywall treads , he has a little spreader jack that he uses to push the walls on either side apart slightly , cuts the treads about 1/16" over length , installs tread then undoes the jack and sproings the walls back in tight , move to next tread and repeat

 

Looking for some ideas, inspiration, and just help. Here is a rough sketch of our floor layout, and the area of concern is the living/kitchen/dining areas. We don’t know how to use the spaces, mainly because the living room with the bay window has 2 large openings and a huge bay window that makes the room difficult to layout.

the wall between the living rooms is a support wall and we’d prefer to do nothing with it. Also noted the air return that I prefer not to relocate.

so I ask, how would YOU layout this space if it was your home?

one thing I think is for sure one day is the small wall behind the stove being opened up, and the kitchen peninsula being moved over into the eat in area. Maybe turning the dining room into a study with French doors to the living area? But then where do we do dining space?

Any ideas appreciated.

 

How big of a project are you looking for? Could the pantry be made smaller or removed? How about the wall between the living rooms, could that be removed?

 

Close! I’m going a little more contemporary. We got some solid hickory newel posts and hand rails. For our balusters we went with powder coated steel round bars. They’re going to be laid horizontally — so like a ladder balustrade. I know some people don’t like horizontal, but we don’t have kids and what not and we think it will match the vibe.

Thank you all . It’s been a royal pain but worth it in the end I hope! We’ll see how the railing goes before I make that determination

 

Very cool and more unique. Excellent work!

 

I’m open to anything, but prefer to not do the wall between the living rooms because it is a structural support wall.

I would be more open to it if we intended to stay in this house forever but we will sell it in a few years.