If you’re just getting caught up, here’s Part I and Part II.

In Part II, I mentioned our old house acoustic ceiling tiles and how in our living room, their uneven tracks were especially unappealing.

The fall before this past one, we had mice that took 6 or 7 tries from a surly extermination company before we were rid of them. At night, we could hear them under those ceiling tiles as we sat on the sofa below. If you’ve seen the 1997 movie Mouse Hunt or have had mice, you may understand the depth of desperation that might have caused me to rip down some of the tiles, looking for the mouse highway. We eventually got rid of the mice, no thanks to my rummaging in the ceiling.

I did find the mouse highway. I also came across sagging plaster with gaping holes and lots of dust. We left it. There was no mental energy for it over the winter and spring.

Then, one of the kids broke a pane of glass in our front door, which is in the living room. When we had the handyman to come replace it, I asked him about the cost of dry walling the ceiling, if we took care of demo. He gave me a price that was about 75% of the cost the last person I’d asked had quoted me. It was a number we could live with. We made the arrangements.

A few days before our handyman was due to begin work, I cleared the room to ready it for the job. After I attempted to start demo and failed to make any progress, I called One in. Fifteen minutes later, the lion’s share of the demo was done. Over the next few days, he finished removing all the staples that had held the tiles into the wood strips that had been put up over the crumbling plaster. Then, finally, we got the smooth ceiling I had hoped for.Except one tiny section. A seam was showing through. I called the handyman and he came back and added a coat of joint compound. But when I sanded it smooth, the furry pieces of joint tape were still showing through. And I wanted perfection. I didn’t want to call him in a second time, so I got joint compound and a crisp new metal putty knife, and applied a small mountain range to the seam in question. Then, when hand sanding wasn’t doing it, I busted out my electric sander.

At night, when the lights were dim, you couldn’t even tell. But after I starting writing this (back in August!), I spent our first week of homeschool in the living room staring at the barely perceptible ridge. I got out my drop cloth, the ladder, and the sander again, sanded it down, patched it, and painted it one. more. time. Now, it REALLY barely shows. Which goes to show you the lengths one might go for perfection before going public about one’s home improvement exploits.

I primed. I painted. I went back to the home improvement store and got molding to go around the fireplace. I’ve always wanted crown molding. This was my chance. The man who cut the piece of trim I picked out looked over at me. “Have you ever cut crown?” he asked.

“No.”

“Do you have a Stanley miter box?”

“I do.”

I did have miter box. But it wasn’t a Stanley miter box. This would matter later.

“Make sure you watch some YouTube videos before you get started,” He said, not unkindly. He explained how cutting ceiling trim, especially crown molding, is a little different. I went home and watched three videos. Each one helped me understand a slightly different aspect of the process. Then I started measuring twice and cutting once. I marked the top, the bottom, the front angle, and the back angle.

When I was finished, I had three pieces of molding cut, and almost no waste. One corner fit together perfectly, and the other one would be fine after a little bit of wood fill. When I checked them on the wall, which is uneven and not quite square like everything in our house, I knew that installation probably wouldn’t be as smooth as cutting had. Plus, we don’t have a brad nailer, so this puppy was going to get nailed in by hand.I put it off for days. I was looking forward to having it installed and the room looking finished, but I was a little terrified that the pieces I’d cut and painted a lovely, dark blue wouldn’t translate on install.

My oldest kid had been away for the week, and with the Chaplain at work most of the day, there was no one to help me test the pieces up at ceiling level. When we finally began the install, we started with the long piece that went across the front.

Instead of working together to hold two of the pieces up to make sure they fit together on the ceiling, fearing we would smudge the beautiful mural (we did anyway), I impatiently directed the action to immediate nailing. Which split some of the molding. We started drilling pilot holes for the nails, which took care of the problem, and the splits were small and not noticeable from the ground. They could easily be patched to invisibility later.

But it was time for the corner pieces, and they did NOT fit. How could they have lined up perfectly when I held them up to one another on the floor?

Well, I had successfully cut all the pieces at the same wrong angle. The pieces fit with each other, but not in a way that went up against the ceiling. I knew there was a chance the cutting process had been too easy, but that didn’t do much to soothe the crushing disappointment.

Later, as I was trying to go to sleep for a couple of hours before my night shift, I read an article in Reader’s Digest that said we don’t reach our mathematical peak until we’re 50. That helped a little.

That night, at work, during one of my few idle moments, I did a quick search for a Stanley miter box. When I saw it and mentally compared it to my miter box at home, I knew what had gone wrong. The man on one of the YouTube videos had mentioned something about a 22.5 degree angle or something like that. There was an angle between straight across and the 45 degree option my miter box offered, and the Stanley miter box had the missing angle.

The next day, paging through my DIY magazine, one of the houses featured had a room with crown molding and again I saw the right angle. Since the length at the bottom of the molding is right, I still hoped I could re-cut the extreme part off the angle and use the same pieces without generating a lot of waste and more cost, if I got the right miter box. Of course, getting the molding back off the ceiling after nailing it on could damage it beyond saving.

Ultimately, I left the one front piece of molding up there. I haven’t even filled in the little nail holes. Because doing that would mean that I was committing to have the miss-cut piece stay up there, and I’m not ready for that. I don’t even pay it any mind most of the time.  I haven’t even filled in the little nail holes. Because doing that would mean that I was committing to have the miss-cut piece stay up there, and I’m not ready for that.

Most of the time, I don’t even think about it. It looks pretty good for a hack job.

My next project was the gallery wall. I have two, my trinity gallery wall, which is more about symbolism than design sense, and our road trip wall. I put this up in its first form after we got home from our 2016 road trip. All the pictures there were significant in some way to our trip. But there wasn’t room for all of them. So when I had to take everything off the walls to get the ceiling dry walled, I decided I was going to make longer shelves to make more room for our road trip memories. I found plans for a picture ledge on Ana White’s website after seeing something similar in my DIY magazine.

The site lists them as $10 ledges. That was in 2010. I paid $11 for one of the three pieces of wood I got, and it was just a piece of pine. Instead of using 2 1×4’s as called for in the plans, I used a 1×4 for the back, and a 1×3 for the bottom of the ledge. It was going up right above a sofa, one my kids frequently jump on despite my protests. I didn’t want a big footprint that would make it more likely for someone to either knock down the frames, or end up in urgent care for stitches.

The most painful part of the project was watching an easy project with little time or skill demands unfold over several days. I didn’t have the uninterrupted time to throw it together all in one shot. The most satisfying part was using my electric sander to get the pieces of wood smooth.

I hand sanded all my projects for years until my dad gave me the sander for Christmas a couple of years ago, and it rocked my world. I’m all about having a step in any project that is low-effort/high-satisfaction.

The plans call for 2-inch finish nails and wood glue to attach the front piece of wood to the ledge. I picked up the most delicate 2-inch finish nails I could find, but when I started hammering them in, getting them straight in without them coming out the bottom of the narrow ledge or splitting the wood proved to be beyond my skill level (and I thought I was ready for crown molding).

I pulled the two nails I’d already tried to drive in back out, and glued and clamped it. I reasoned the front of the ledge was just to keep the pictures from sliding off the narrow shelf; they wouldn’t be supporting any real weight. Plus, the grain of the wood on the narrow front piece was beautiful, and I didn’t want to mar it with more nails and then wood fill.I did some testing with my wood scraps with different stains I had lying around, like the Danish oil I used for the bench I made for our dining room table. Ultimately, I used the same wax finishing paste that had been recommended in the This Old House instructions I followed for my coffee table. It maintains the wood’s natural tone, but enhances the grain just a little. The added benefit is that it can easily be reapplied, and there isn’t the trouble with a poly stain with clean up, bubbles in the finish, and multiple coats.

I am a bit of a slap-dash DIYer. When it was time to install my new picture ledges, the stud finder’s language eluded me with its continuous beeping and flashing (using the stud finder is usually the Chaplain’s department. I know where my stud is, so who cares about the stud finder? I later found out I was doing it wrong). I found at least one stud to drive my screws into, and it was right in the middle of the long one. I used 2 in. screws, and once installed, everything felt sturdy.I still occasionally fear that someday one of the ledges will just fall off the wall. Sometimes it feels like my home improvement skills just aren’t maturing fast enough (a metaphor for development in other areas of my life?).

I think logically, though, the shelves are good to go. I had my previous shelves up there for two years with holes in line with the same place I put the new ones. I never questioned their ability to stay on the wall. Even with the kids flying up onto the sofa with their feet in the air, regularly kicking the old shelves, they never came down. There’s just an added insecurity with something you made yourself – even if that thing is sturdier and looks better than something from the store.Much of our life happens in this room, and it has proven flexible. All the time we spend there makes me grateful that I was able to get our ceiling almost perfectly smooth. Because a room that does heavy lifting that should have  one surface that looks good all the time. I’m only being partly facetious.