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The Joy of Moldings

Installation & Design Tips

How High Should the Entablature or Overdoor Frieze Be?

[This is part of my How to Install Moldings series.] Jay commented on Before & After: Will’s Bathroom and Window Trim, and asked a very simple question that I’m shamed to say I should have addressed long ago: Can anyone tell…

Installation & Design Tips

Architectural Subordination

[This is part of my How to Install Moldings series.] Architectural subordination infuses diversity into your decorative moldings by giving you rules that produce both harmony and variety. Public vs Private and Utility Rooms The molding patterns in your home should…

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Why Moldings? I Am My Father’s Son

Update: My dad, Herb O’Brien, passed away in late January, 2014, peacefully and at home, right where he wanted to go. He was a wonderful dad, and I’ve missed him every day since. His last year was quite difficult, and…

Jennifer's Nest, Our Molding Makeover Updates

Finding Happiness in Our Local Lighting Store

Our Bathroom Light-Hunting Safari Part 2 By Jennifer Lighting our half-bath presented a Gordian knot of design challenges: limited space, basic functional requirements, and poor choices at our initial price point.  We can’t expand the bathroom and I don’t intend…

Jennifer's Nest, Our Molding Makeover Updates

Jennifer & Ken Leave the Big Box

Part 1 of Our Bathroom Light-Hunting Safari By Jennifer Ken and I realized yesterday that for weeks we’ve been in the grip of what a friend of mine from graduate school calls the Serengeti Effect.  The Serengeti Effect originally described…

Jennifer's Nest

My Nesting Material: Books, Not Just Moldings, from Tucson

By Jennifer To hear recent transplants talk, the only true safety in Tucson lies in retreat along the freeway to Vail or Marana, and the neighborhood where I grew up is a meth-crazed wasteland.  For me, part of nesting has…

Our Molding Makeover Updates

Half Bathroom Renovation Part 3: Ceiling Rosettes and Border Test Color

Lately we’ve been playing around with the ceiling rosettes and the accent border color dimensions in our half bathroom. And it’s a good thing, too, because this layout has helped us decide we want a larger rosette than the one…

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Warning! myFinishCarpentry.com is No Longer My Website!

I just discovered someone has purchased my old domain name, myFinishCarpentry.com, and threw up a construction-related link farm in its place — apparently to capitalize on the reputation and traffic of that old blog. So please don’t think that web…