ben and i made certain agreements regarding the house: he would fix toilets, i would handle all paperwork. he will tear off Scary Shed, i will paint the front porch. it’s a combination of playing to our strengths, and enabling us each to avoid the things we hate most.

when it comes to installing trim in the rental unit, our division of labor was such that ben would measure, buy, base paint, cut, and install all the trim and i would fill, patch, sand, and paint it. in the end, our respective tasks took us each about three weekends. ben’s dad helped him for one of those weekends, my mom helped me for one of those. so the labor division was probably pretty even. i worked my way through two audio books in the time it took to fill, patch, sand, caulk, tape, and paint the nearly 1000 linear feet of baseboards and window and door casing (we left crown moulding out of the rental unit entirely – it is a nice touch but there’s only so much time in a day).

here’s the thing about foundations. they are what you build everything else on. seems obvious, right? like all old buildings, ours has settled and nothing is square. and so despite the fact that the drywall is new, the walls bow and curve as much as 1/2″ from top to bottom around a doorway. at first we thought it was just a terrible drywall job, but then i had this epiphany about foundations. since we didn’t do a full gut rehab and take the walls down to the studs, the drywall was installed over the plaster and lathe walls. which are 1) 110 years old, and 2) naturally have curves and imperfections. if you put new drywall over an imperfect foundation, you get an imperfect finished surface. so ben had a lot working against him when it came to mitering corners and installing the trim. even though i made as many as 7 passes over every piece of the same trim, i’m still amazed at just how many feet he managed to cut and install.

since i love process photos, here’s a quick photographic journey of just one of the approximately 7000 corners and joints that i finished in the past month.

1: trim installed with a base coat of paint on it:

2: fill cracks larger than 1/4″ with an expanding foam:

3: after 24 hours, scrape any excess foam out so that it sits about 1/4″ back from the edge, creating a foundation for the joint compound in the next step:

4: use a joint compound like Patch n Paint to fill in every nail hole and imperfection, and to sculpt the missing materials in the corners:

5: after another 24 hours, sand away the excess joint compound. with a damp rag, wipe away excess dust, then run a line of acrylic caulk along the gap between the top of the moulding and the wall. if the gap is larger than 1/8″, fill with joint compound, first. then let the caulk sit on top of the JC:

6: tape, unless you’re a professional painter who can get paint only where he wants it. i am not one of those:

7: finished: