Stairway to Heavenly

My wife and I are fortunate to live in an early 20^th century home, which has a lot of great architectural details. We have beautiful molding in the dining room and interesting plaster work in other rooms, but our staircase was boring. Bland. Bare.

So, bring on the molding.

All it took was a little patience and an angle finder to create this wall. It’s simply the work of creating the illusion of a paneled wall that appears to look like one elaborate wall treatment.

The key: Getting a balanced design, and paying special attention to how you space out the boxes and molding. Keep it simple and use the angle finder for the miters. Finish it off with wood filler or spackling to get a more precise finish with the miters. And then let your wife do the painting. 

Making Changes Down Under

The previous owners of our house thought it was a good idea to carpet the basement. We didn’t think so, so we found a great product that bends to the uneven floor. It’s vinyl, so it’s easy to clean, doesn’t get mildew and it looks like real hardwood from far.

This Armstrong vinyl flooring is great for the basement

Finished, it resembles hardwood

The beginning of the shelving unit I built

We also needed storage for all our books (my wife has been working on a Ph.D., so she’s amassed a large number of books over the years). I built these bookshelves to store all our books.

And then we added the books.