house pretty - guest room

I'd like to share a few home improvement projects here on my blog. Don't worry - this won't become a big DIY blog, or decorating blog, but we've made a few changes to our house since moving in over a year ago, and this seems like a good place to share.

I don't have all the technical terms for everything we did and used, but I've done my best to gather all the information and keep it simple. If you've got more questions, please leave a comment or send me an email: sweetbananie@gmail.com

This was our guest room a few months after we moved in. Nothing fancy.

guest room before

In Colorado, pine beetles invade the pine trees in a forest, and eventually, the trees die and can become fuel for a forest fire. Bad news. However, the inside of the pine trees get this pretty blue color from the beetles, and some entrepreneurial folks have started to chop down beetle kill pine and sell it. Which is pretty smart - each piece of lumber is different, kinda pretty, and very "Colorado."

One of my mom's friends was fixing up a condo that they own, and they had found some beetle kill pine at The Home Depot and used it to cover a wall. It looked pretty cool and rustic, and we thought we'd give it a shot. My mom's friend used the boards horizontally to cover the entire wall - we decided to instead go with vertical and only as tall as a chair rail. The boards are six inch tongue-and-groove boards, so they fit together easily.

air compressor (Sears)

One of the first things we did was purchase an air compressor (I think the Mr. thinks of projects to do that require new power tools to get the job done...funny how that happens).

Then, we measured and purchased the boards from The Home Depot. The side we faced-out has a groove in the center of the board, but the other side does not. We chose the side with the groove to add texture. In the meantime, we pulled off the existing trim and cleared a lot out of the room so we would have space to work.

during

during

during

The Mr. used the air compressor, nail gun, and finishing nails to hang the boards on the walls.

Then, we ran into a snag.

Trim.

Beetle kill pine doesn't come in trim. And most of the other trim options we looked at didn't really "go" with the look of the room. And, since these boards are technically flooring, they're much thicker than standard trim, so any trim we did find wasn't deep enough to "cap off" the boards on the wall.

Following me?

We searched and searched. And finally, about six weeks later, found some rough cut beetle kill pine at a local lumber yard.

local lumber place for the trim

trim - rough cut beetle kill pine

more rough & unfinished than the boards

the trim after the first couple routers, unsanded

the trim after a rough first sanding

the final trim

after

after

after

And then there was lots of sanding and puttying for the chair rail to really be finished.

We love love love how this turned out. Originally, we thought about doing this to every bedroom in our house, but the trim proved to be such a problem (the Mr. had to free hand the trim with the routing table), that we decided against it. Instead, we think it's a nice touch on one room - a very "Colorado" touch. And if you can't tell, we love Colorado.

Our biggest expenses for this project were the lumber, the air compressor, and the routing table. BUT, we've since used the air compressor and routing table several times on different projects, so those were investments we'll continue to use. I didn't know way back when that I'd be posting this, so I don't have a cost breakdown - whoops. 

And here's a list of the tools we used for this project:

air compressor

nail gun + finishing nails

sanding block

routing table

circular saw

palm sander

putty knife + putty

So, that was our first project in our house. And we're slowly adding more to our reportoire...