It's the Little Things

Sometimes there are small projects that just seem like they never get done.  My house is full of these.  Any one of them would take "10 seconds", but for some reason they just never happen.  One of these is baseboards in our living room.  Let me back up for a sec....

When we bought our house we were super excited to find hardwood floor under the icky carpet.  We removed carpet from the whole house only to find some damage on the floor in the living room, plus a HOLE in the floor in the dining room.  A hole.  About 3 inches across and clear through to the basement.  To make a longer story short, we ended up replacing the hardwoods throughout the first floor, and removing the baseboard to do it.  That was 2007.  It's now 2012 and we're still trying to put the mess back together LOL.

The first room to get baseboards was the dining room.  That was a few years ago.  Then came the living room - all but the corner back by the kitchen.  And that's what Jason was able to get to this weekend!

Of course he wasn't alone - Chris helped!

Now because our house is extra special and doesn't have studs in the "right spots" Jason sort of popped a nail in and out of the wall over and over until he could find and mark where the studs were in the wall.  There were probably 8-10 holes in the wall, but the baseboard covered it all up.

And for those who may wonder, we DO have a studfinder!  But the plaster is so thick on the old walls (works fine on newer drywall parts), that the studfinder errors out.

Just had to include this pic.  While he wasn't able to find studs, Chris was able to locate his belly button.

Putting up the baseboard was literally less than a day (really just a side project tacked onto a bigger project),   but it makes such a difference in how the space looks.  It was just a good reminder to take a look at the little projects on your to-do list and bang one or two out over a weekend and see if you like your place a little more.