Moldings - A good starting point

When my husband and I were looking for our first house we had two very different ideas of what we wanted.  I had grown up helping my dad do fix it up projects around our house, and my husband had never done much more than change a light bulb as far as home repairs go. So while I thought it would be great to buy a house that needed a little TLC, my husband really wanted something that we wouldn’t have to do anything to, something new and pristine.  We didn’t have a huge budget to work with and so I thought an older home would be perfect, we could get more for our money. I finally gave in and we bought a three bedroom condo that was only 8 years old. 

My husband learned something: that it didn’t matter how nice our condo was I was not going to sit around and not do anything, I enjoyed the home improvement projects. Shortly after we moved in I became pregnant with our first baby and I was so excited to start in on a nursery. Because the whole concept made my husband extremely nervous (the decorating more than the upcoming baby) I started with something simple.

We painted the top half a light green and the bottom half a medium green.  And then separated the two with a small molding that I painted white.  This was ten years ago. I had a hard time finding a picture of it.  All I can find is a picture of the window with the curtains I put up. But you can see a little bit of my walls.  I loved the addition, thought it brought a lot to the room, not just boring one tone room.

 

Shortly after that I convinced him that it wasn’t too hard to put up the molding and that our front room needed crown molding it in. We had ten foot ceilings and high ceilings called for something fancy.  The problem was that in our Condo all the furnace vents were not in the floor or ceiling, but in the walls up by the ceiling, right where crown molding should go. I had to get creative.  One day I came up with the idea of once again using a simple small molding on both the wall and the ceiling.  And then painting both the molding and everything between the molding the same color. To make it look like really tall molding.  I was very pleased with the results.  And it did a great job at hiding the furnace vents (I painted those too).

 

After these  we discovered paint and moldings are a great way to update space. And I started to see a little bit of confidence in my husband increase.  I always feel after a good home improvement project my bonds to my husband have strengthened. I love to work side by side with him. However,  especially at first they didn’t always go smoothly, sometimes there is a bit of tension and frustrations.  But as the years have gone on, it seams like we have learned better how to work by each other’s sides. In 1995 The LDS church issued a statement about The Family. In it, it states, "Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities." Oh how much we have grown together through the work we have done together. This is one of the biggest reasons I love owning a home instead of renting, because we get to do the work on it.