I'm about to paint the last two walls of my living room and dining room, the final step of a $3000 project to complete a vision I've had for years.
To back up: I bought a house with my wife 14 years ago that had a nice layout in a very quiet neighborhood 10 miles from downtown Portland. The downside of the house was that everything done to it after initial construction was done on the cheap. (Well, almost everything. Dining and livingroom wall to wall carpet was high quality and installed right, with several touches the contractor who installed the new floor benefited from. But the bathroom faucet assembly? No mechanical fasteners. Glued down with plaster of Paris.)
The livingroom is stepped down from the stone tiled entry hall and dining room. The roofline forms the high ceiling and there is a dark wood beam at the peak. Paint was a poorly done so-so white. Years ago I had a vision of 1) painting the walls in a Southwest scheme of colors, 2) going to a wood floor and 3) putting in faux beams along the bottonm of the roofline, already started with a foot deep overhead wall between the diningroom and livingroom.
Well I am close friends with a chap, lifelong carpenter, struggling to find work in this down economy. (The union doesn't work for him and word of mouth worked for decades.) Last fall, I hired him to build new fences for my lot. (Old ones were done and later fixed up at the quality standard I mentioned above.) The new one will outlast all my neighbors. It's a joy to watch this guy work. So I employed him to create the faux beams (That's faux pronounced like AUXiliry; to emphasis the similarity to "Fox" news.) Then bamboo flooring. Wow! Before even touching the walls.
Now, I'm about to do the last walls. Then time to address lighting. (Cool thing is I built a stereo cabinet that works really well with the new scheme and has been quite audible making my work more pleasant. And it sounds much better with the wood floors! So does my harp amp.) And enjoy!
Off to paint!
Ben