Closing the Book on the Library Renovation

As promised, I've finished the latest room project! (Well, okay, I still have to construct some built-in bookcases, but that's going to wait for a little while.) In my last post, I'd gotten about halfway through the baseboard installation. This time, I'll briefly review the second half, plus a couple of other items that I haven't really covered until now...

Closet Trim. When I first started stripping the closet, I had to remove three pieces of plain cove moulding that surrounding the entire frame - and since curved moulding is always a big pain to strip and sand, I wanted to just replace those pieces with new identical cover pieces that I could just cut and stain. After some consideration, though, we decided to go with something a little more decorative - specifically, some ornamental moulding with an embossed flower pattern. It's very subtle when you're viewing the closet as a whole, but it's a nice touch.



Closet trim close-up



Trim surrounding closet frame

Floor Paint. Oh yes, one other thing... The floor that was underneath the carpet wasn't perfect, and there are some worn areas and stains that will remain (mostly hidden by an area rug) until whenever we get a chance to refinish all the upstairs floors. However, there were also some splotches of paint left years ago (mostly... yes, a few are mine); you could even see the outline where some former owners painted a built-in desk right on the wood floor! This was actually fairly easy to remove, so I wanted to mention it in case you find yourself dealing with the same problem.

Simply pour a little bit of water over the paint and let it soften for a few minutes, then take a flat-bladed screwdriver and carefully scrape off the loose paint, working in the direction of the wood grain. (Of course, you should test this in an inconspicuous area to make sure it works and that you have a light touch.) If the paint is on top of polyurethane or other floor coating, it should come up quickly. Here's a sample of some paint I removed, which took me less than 5 minutes, including soaking time:

Old paint splotch on floor



And it's gone! (near bottom center)



Baseboards. Although I'd managed to construct the main 'base' of the baseboards from leftovers and scrap, I still needed to add a trim piece along the top, and a quarter-round piece along the bottom - and I didn't have enough old pieces for either. Quarter-round is easy enough to find at the big box home stores like Home Depot and Lowe's, but I couldn't find anything that was a good match to the top trim that already appears throughout the house.



Our house's typical baseboard trim

Fortunately, a quick internet search led me to Darpet, whose main office/warehouse is conveniently only a few miles from my office. Their custom mouldings start with a minimum order of 200 feet, but since I only needed 25 feet for this room, that wasn't really workable. Fortunately (again), they had a stock piece (2464PM) that was both in oak and fairly similar to what I needed - even a little fancier. Best of all, it was only $1.40 per linear foot, which is easily comparable or better priced than the big box stores.



The new top baseboard trim (oak not shown)

After I'd picked up the trim from Darpet and the quarter-round from Home Depot (my main big box store, simply because I can pass it on my way home from work each day), all I needed to do was measure, cut, and stain. And with that complete, so was the room!

Here are the final photos, some taken with the overhead light on, and some with only natural light. The color really picks up on the surrounding light, so it can be very different depending on what time of day you're in there and what lights are on!

North wall. Three bases butt-joined. Gaps covered by wood putty. The top trim and bottom quarter-round also help hide the gaps.

West wall. Two bases miter-joined. Gap filled with wood putty.

New closet cabinet knobs from Menard's.

NW corner, lights off. (Note the difference between wall and ceiling colors.)

NW corner, lights on

SW corner, lights off.

SW corner, lights on

South wall; outlet cover from Lowe's

East wall - and my exit to the next project!

My next project will be to clean out the baby room, which I'd filled with everything I took out of this room! Hence the need to get this room finished before I could start on the baby room. I don't expect to do much hardcore renovation work in the baby room, since I've already completed the closet, but there's lots of furniture construction and decoration to do, so stay tuned for that!