Mission creep

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted, I've been busy with my new job. I started working for a new company in August in a contract-to-hire position, and took a permanent position in October. It's a good place to work, with lots of challenging programming projects, so I'm very happy.

But in the interim, I've tackled two big projects at the KSModern home! I'll lead off with this post about the dining room project.

I've never been happy with the transition between the living room and dining room. Originally there was a half-wall that separated the room, with spindly little posts from the top of this wall to the ceiling. And on the living room side of this half-wall... faux brick. I removed that wall around 1998, I'd say. It looked better, and opened the two rooms up to one another, but with this renovation I made a poor color choice and painted the remaining trim a mossy green. Making matters worse, I carried this color into the living room on the baseboard.

This year I'd finally grown WAY tired of staring at this green trim, and in mid August I tore it down. Here's how it looked afterward:

You can just spot a bit of the green trim leaning against on the back wall. Ugly. So the idea was to remove this trim, add corner bead, patch it up with joint compound, paint it, et voila! It's done. But that's not how it turns out in the real world. Instead, I decided to extend this little project in the dining room. By continuing the sandy color of the living room into the dining room, both rooms would be linked and flow together better. Sounds easy to me. More pics below.

Above is the view from the kitchen.

This is a detail of the south wall.

After a night or two of joint compounding (compound jointing?), I was pleased with the result.

But as you can see above, I'd already taken a step into the dining room and removed a section of wallpaper. The mission in Mission was creeping.

In the next post, I'll tell you how I brought home a stripper.