Faux Beams

When I did the drywall in the living room and dining room I did not finish the door jamb between the two rooms. I wanted to use some of the same reclaimed timber that I used for the mantle to create a beamed look for the doorway. Well that kind of went by the wayside for a while and I thought I would try to buy or make some french doors that would look old and worn. The problem is the size of the opening. it is 8 ft tall.  Finding ready made doors that fit the opening was proving to be a problem as was making them. I was really wishing that I had just wrapped the whole thing with sheet rock and had it textured to match when I had the walls done originally. I could do it now but matching the texture exactly is always a problem and I did not want a miss-match patch job. I went back to the rustic beam idea and decided to expirament with some cheap 1X lumber. I studied some distressed furniture and looked up some ideas on the internet. Here is the end result. I am pretty happy with the way it all turned out. I learned some lessons that I would do differently, but nothing that makes me want to scrap the attempt and start over. So far the reaction from everyone that has seen it has been very positive. Please feel free to add any comments positive or not.

Dining Room Progress

The dining room is comming along quite well. I have finished all the painting. I was not going to paint the ceiling but after the walls and trim were painted the ceiling looked pretty dingy so I decided to go ahead and do it. I already had a bucket of left over paint. All that remains to do is install and paint the base board and trim around the doors. I used the same red paint that was left over from when Robin painted the walls originally. The frieze and crown molding was looking pretty bad. there were some cracks showing up between the crown and the ceiling. Some caulk and a coat of glossy white paint has really made a big difference in the look.

 

Wall Texture

This is just an update on the dining room progress, which I am really happy about. It took two days for the skim coat to dry in the corner on the outside wall without any insulation in the bay. I debated about cutting the drywall out and adding some insulation but decided not to. It goes against my nature so I still have twinges of regret when I think about it. I find it very hard to leave a mistake uncorrected.

Thursday afternoon I sanded the walls and yesterday I sprayed the texture. I have to say this is the fastest I have ever completed such a task. It took me many days between trips to complete the bedroom. once the skim coat is on it must be sanded. Sanding drywall joints and patches is a laborious and messy job. The dust is extreemly fine and seems to find it's way into every place in the house from one end to the other. I decided to try mechanical sanding this time. I hooked the shop vac to the dust port on my random orbital sander and with 80 grit paper sanded all three walls in about an hour or so. The really cool thing is that there was no dust! The vac did a superb job. I can't believe it has taken me this long to figure this out!

There are a couple of good reasons actually. One is that the vacume adapter for my sander really didn't fit well(thanks to Porter Cable)It just occurred to me that wrapping a single layer of duct tape(the handy-man's secret weapon) around the port on the sander would hold the adapter in place. It did! I tried electrical tape in the past and the results were not acceptable.

The second and biggest reason is my recent discovery of bags for the shop vac! I don't know how long they have been around, but they turn a good tool into a fantastic system. Why didn't someone tell me about these things years ago. The dust filter on a shop vac clogs with dust pretty quickly(duh)when you vaccum up any kind of fine particles. Dry wall dust is especially bad clogs the filter very quickly. Once the filter is clogged the suction is reduced substantially. The bags are fantastic. All the dust is contained in the bag and the filter stays clean. I'm telling you this is really fantastic.