Toothpicks and painting trim

In that last few weeks of my maternity leave I decided that a week of it would be spent painting the trim and built-ins in our dining room white.  It sounds simple enough, right?

Wrong!

Painting trim is never easy, and if you say that it is than you are either lying to yourself or have never painted trim.  There is cleaning, sanding, patching, more cleaning and wiping and maybe more sanding and more cleaning.  You get the picture, don't you?

Here is our dining room before. (sorry about the bad picture but all of the pictures are taken with my iphone)

Please don't mind the mess, I am not a neat home improver, plus I was working on this while driving back and forth to daycare to nurse baby E, so time had to be spent painting not cleaning.

Our house is very small, I think it is around 1100 sq feet, and the dark wood trim just isn't working anymore. The trim makes every room feel like it is evening time, even when it is bright and sunny outdoors.  Believe it or not, the dining room gets the most sun.  I also think the windows are too skinny, but buying new ones does not fit in our budget.  But painting ALWAYS fits in the budget!

Now on to the first window.  Toothpicks and trim...bet you never thought you'd hear those two words in the same sentence.  My man is the one who had this idea, he read it in one of his handyman magazines.  Once you take off all the curtains, curtain rods, and nails, you are left with very sad looking trim.  What you want is happy trim, after all it deserves it!  The solution...toothpicks!

Here is sad trim:

more sad trim...

   Here is spiky trim

Here is trim getting happier

Here is very happy trim: (for some reason I can't find the close up picture I took of the corner...or maybe I forgot to, so this will do for now. This is a sneak peak to the built-in also)

The steps are simple, place a little dab of wood putty in each hole.  Then take a round wooden toothpick (very important, do not use plastic!) and place it in the hole.  Try not to move the toothpick around very much so the putty stays in place.  Let the putty dry.  Then take a razor blade, being extremely careful, and try to place it as flat on the trim as possible and cut the protruding toothpick.  You may need to add some more putty to fill in any gaps that may have occurred. Let the new putty dry. Then sand and wipe clean with a clean cloth.  Now it is ready to be painted!

Til next time!

Happy Thursday Everyone!