Present Joys

The guys from Schrocks were here again today to finish up odds and ends. They brought the completed doors for my front parlor cabinets (which are beautiful and will be wildly time-consuming to stain and finish), installed the mirror backsplash in my dining room (photos of that soon), and completed the cornice on the foyer bookcases. The color weirdness shown here is due to some parts being more pre-finished than others. Now that these are in, I can thoroughly finish everything.

Reuben, one of the Schrocks installers, did a beautiful job carefully coping out the bookcase cornice pieces to fit around the head block that will go in as part of the window trim (at the very far left corner in this photo). I have some work to do before the window trim will go back in, but once it does, it should be a nice tight fit.

The Schrocks installers were here for nearly a full day again today, and they spent most of it getting the front parlor cabinets fitted and installed. These were particularly exciting to see go in. Since I’d had the chance to prefinish these boxes, it was instantly possible to see how the color on the new pieces matched the color on the adjacent antique mantelpiece (and they looked really good). The tops are still raw, so those will need more attention when I get the time.

Unfortunately, three days for installation was all I’d been allotted for on the schedule, and because they didn’t finish up, they’ll have to come back at an undetermined future date to get things wrapped up. Here’s what’s left:

• I need more holes drilled in the side of the dining room uppers so I can adjust those shelves beyond what Schrocks anticipated. The guys brought a jig to drill those additional holes but they didn’t get to it today. Oh, horror—this means I will have to wait to start putting things on shelves!
• They also didn’t get to installing the mirrored backsplash in the dining room. This is also a bummer because it means we’ll still have a bit of open studs visible until they come back.
• The cornice on the foyer bookcases needs to be installed. This consists of a very attractive solid top panel with an integrated crown molding plus a few lengths of dentil and cove molding that go below it. Thankfully, the missing bookcase cornices won’t hold up the finishing work I need to do on them.
• The front parlor built-ins are closest to finished, but they’re very conspicuously missing doors. These weren’t finished, but hopefully they’ll be ready by the next time the installers are here.

Jordan is returning next week to continue working on our stairs, so I need to do some prefinishing in the foyer before he comes back.

Schrocks is coming Monday to begin installation of built-in cabinets I designed for three rooms: foyer, front parlor, and dining room. In true Victorian style, we are prioritizing the beauty and majesty of these three “principal rooms” while we continue to ignore our miserable kitchen. I will write more about the cabinets in each of these rooms.

The installers will bring most of the large cabinets and many assorted small trim pieces when they come next week. For now, Karen’s uncle Hosea was passing by Columbus and offered to drop off the two cabinet boxes that will go in the front parlor. For how much these things cost, it’s hilarious to see them hanging out of the back of a pickup truck, but I figure Hosea knows what he’s doing.

I’d requested to get these two in particular early so I could get a head start on finishing them. The paneled ends of each cabinet here will be installed close to the mantelpiece which is already in place. Today I frantically applied dye stain and the first two coats of polyurethane, which is a good start.