This month was productive in terms of house progress, but also a bit of a whirlwind on many levels. The preparations to return to school, both for the University where we both work and for the local schools our kids attend have both been up in the air and subject to last minute changes. Thus we found ourselves fighting through hectic and unpredictable days at work and railing at frustrating and unpredictable Fall schooling plans for the kids at night. In the end, the kids started back to school a week late and 100% virtual. Miss K is even in a new school with new classmates now that she’s advanced to middle school, but she has to meet all her teachers through Zoom and the closest she got to the school building was a sweep through the circle drive for contactless Chromebook distribution. Strange times, and yet through it all the relentless march of trimwork…

• We started the month off with an escape to the North Woods of Wisconsin for a lovely, isolated vacation. Outdoor activities and books ruled the days – and no WiFi!
• Installed so. much. trim.
• Painted lots of trim too
• Kept growing grass and weeds (hoping to get it more established this fall before winter sets in)
• Put the finishing touches on the fireplace cubbies; a tiny change that made an outsized visual impact.

For the record, I’ve discovered I can trim approximately 5 openings per day with a 6-7 hour workday. There are about 30 doors and a similar number of windows, but most doors vexingly need trimmed on both sides, doubling their work time. So that makes for approximately 90 openings to trim, or 9 full weekends where both days are spent just on door and window casings. I’m advantaged here in that the craftsman style molding design we went with does not require mitering the casings, rather everything is mostly flat cuts. But the complexity of the design means each cased opening has 7 distinct pieces that have to be measured, cut, and often the ends sanded and stained / painted before being assembled and then installed.

Baseboards are a bit more unpredictable as the timing is greatly impacted by the number of changes in the wall plane for a room. The end of a wall or half-wall can take an hour as its three pieces with outside angles that rarely meet at exactly 45 degrees. Getting it just right takes me about 3 trips to the miter saw for each piece, carefully shaving it down and adjusting the angle. Tedious, but critical for the final product. The bedrooms in particular also require moving a ton of furniture around in a relatively small space, which adds time.

Meanwhile Amy has been down in the basement by herself for those same 12-14 hours of weekend work, listening to podcasts and endlessly swiping that brush back and forth, back and forth. She’s painted over 100 pieces of trim 8-12′ in length, and still there seems an endless stack of it still waiting her ministrations. We’re in something of a race where she’s trying to paint as much as possible while I’m still working through the last of the factory-stained trim.

You can look forward to a very similar “all trim, all-the-time” post for September (where we only have 1 working weekend anyway) and October. Like the pandemic, it seems to stretch on far longer than expected. 😉

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