DIYnot

Only 8 weeks to go, less than two months!  We are feeling pretty good about our level of readiness.  There are many things we’d still like to do in these remaining weeks - smaller house projects, stocking up on baby supplies, practicing for labor and delivery, learning infant safety/CPR and getting our car seat installed and checked - but even so I think we’re ready enough to handle whatever happens even if we end up with less time than we anticipate.

Our hypnobirthing class wrapped up last weekend.  It was 5 classes of hypno (preparation for labor and delivery) plus one class on breastfeeding and one on newborn care.  We also met some other parents-to-be (and one couple that became parents last week!) who we like and hope to continue seeing outside of class.  We have received many wonderful gifts from friends and family.  We are so thankful for their generosity, and that our baby’s arrival coincides conveniently with some of our friends’ babies growing out of their old gear, which have been passed along to us.  You know how I love, love, love to reuse things.

In pregnancy news, all is well.  I feel very healthy, with just the occasional minor discomforts such as mild heartburn at times.  I had a midwife checkup this morning.  I’ve gained 23 lbs so far.  The baby’s head has been down for the past four weeks, and it looks like he’ll stay that way for the duration.  Good job, baby.  His movements are getting stronger.  I worry that one of these times when he kicks or pushes right on my bladder, I might pee.  Whenever I feel that, it reminds me to do a few pelvic floor exercises, but I know this is common in pregnancy and it could very well happen.  I keep meaning to bring an extra pair of pants to work just in case.  All in all, things are great!  Just waiting for our little one to join us.  

-Kelly

My hubby designed and built us a new bed in one day!  Well, the design took a few weeks off and on and went through several iterations, but the building was completed in one day.  

He primed and painted a bedroom!  (I patched some drywall beforehand and Matt matched the perlite texture.)

He created built-in (ish) wardrobes in that bedroom with an overhead storage shelf!

He replaced most of the baseboard in that bedroom and some in the living room!

Sometimes the blogging doesn’t keep up with all the great work that Matt does.  Sometimes I go ahead and share what he’s done, but I’m going to let him tell you about these himself.  Maybe soon.  Hint, hint.

-Kelly

Last night Matt made us a dinner of pizza with artichoke hearts and olives and green beans on the side.  We were eating on the couch as usual.  I was tired from not sleeping all that well the previous two nights, a little groggy from an impromptu early evening nap, and generally struggling to get into a comfortable position.  I had the plate balanced on my lap while trying to maneuver a pillow behind me, and the plate slid onto the floor along with all my food.  I scooped it all back onto my plate, inspected it, found it surprisingly not covered in dog fur, and proceeded to eat it.  Hardwood floors are good.

-Kelly

There was an excellent party over the weekend, and I’ll tell you all about it soon.  For now, I wanted to share a quickie DIY project.  There was going to be some delicious homemade cupcakes at this party, and they needed a proper stand for display.  I’d seen a bunch of DIY cupcake stands on blogs over the years, and as I recalled you just stack some platters with glasses or whatever you want to make the tiers and glue it all together.

I stopped by Goodwill and got 3 white ceramic plates of different sizes that were fairly flat and semi-matching, plus two plain white coffee mugs with a nice shape.  Others have gone a more colorful route, or used glass stemware, or even painted the whole thing, but I liked the all-white look.  The supplies all together cost less than $5.

I did some measuring to locate the center of each plate, sanded the surfaces (in the places that would be touching) a little to give the glue something to grab onto, and used the mugs to trace in pencil exactly where they would be attached.  Then I put some blue painter’s tape about 1/8” outside of that outline and erased the pencil.  That way I would be able to glue everything in the right place without making a mess and no visible pencil marks.

I used some Gorilla super glue I already had on hand.  After I glued each piece together (in a well ventilated location), I put a gallon of paint on top to act as a clamp and let it set for a while (maybe 10-30 minutes) before doing the next part.  Once everything was glued, I left it alone for at least an hour just to be sure the glue was cured.  I removed the tape, used a razor blade to scrape off the little bit of excess glue on the visible parts, and washed it.  That’s it.  Pretty easy.

The best part was the cupcakes!  Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, one of my favorites, made by a good friend for a special day.  Mmm, so good!

-Kelly

This morning I fed the dogs and let them out into the back yard.  When they’re outside, we usually leave the cover off the doggie door so they can come in when they want to, but then they are trapped in the kitchen by a closed baby gate.  That way we can wipe their dirty feet (and dry them off if it’s raining) before they run all through the house.  As I was about to leave for work, I checked the kitchen and saw the dogs were not inside yet, so I told Matt to check on them in a little while.  

Then I opened the front door to a sight never before seen: Max and Sonny running through the front yard, not a care in the world!  They came right inside when I called them.  

The side gate was open, which is probably the result of Matt giving some tours of his front and back yard gardens to visiting family over the weekend, and then not checking that all gates were securely latched afterward.  We’re usually very careful about that, but we’ll have to be even more careful or build some redundancy into the system (we have long thought of having a double gate system - one at the front and one at the back - along both sides of the house, for various reasons other than extra security for dogs).  This could have been a disaster.  The dogs were not wearing their collars at the time, since we often take them off when they’re at home.  We live on a fairly busy street.  The dogs are microchipped, so at least there’s that as backup if they’re ever lost and collarless, but it doesn’t help if they get hit by a car.  

Whew!

-Kelly

This evening I took the dogs to the dog park, but I realized when I got there that I forgot to bring balls.  Max was going to be mightily disappointed when we got to the end of the walking/sniffing/playing segment and reached the point where we would normally do some fetching.  I had an idea though.  We have lost at least 3 balls to the wilds outside the park fence, and of course many other people have lost many other balls.  I decided to bring the Chuckit wand (which we keep in the car, since our yard is not big enough to warrant its use at home) and see if I couldn’t retrieve one or more of those lost balls, either through the chain link fence on the side that is 6 feet tall with barbed wire at the top (because it borders the property of a federal agency), or by going over or around the 4 foot fence on the side that borders more city park land.  As we walked, I kept my eyes open for any lost balls just outside the fence, especially in the areas where I knew we had lost one, but also everywhere else.

I saw dozens of tennis balls within fairly easy reach.  But my dogs only like the orange Chuckit balls.  They will chase a tennis ball, but they won’t retrieve it.  I saw one orange ball that would have been reachable except that the chain link fence was doubled up at that stretch, making it impossible to fit the wand through.  Another one in some blackberry brambles outside a section of the four foot fence looked promising.  I tried to climb the fence.  I couldn’t do it!  I was totally shocked.  Not that I climb fences frequently, but every other time I’ve done it in the past it was pretty easy.  Especially one that is only four feet tall.  I know I weigh 20 lbs more than usual and have been doing less strength training than ever before, but still it seemed ridiculous that I could not hoist myself to the top of the fence.  I had to go to the nearest gate and then walk all the way back along the fence, only to find that the ball was too deep into the blackberry to get.  Wah-wah.  

Later I found a tennis ball inside the park.  I threw it, the dogs chased after it, but not finding their kind of ball, they searched for a minute and then gave up.

-Kelly

Isn’t it weird how you have to assign a name to a person or animal right when you first meet him, before you have a chance to really get to know him?  

When we got Max, he had been living with the people who found him for over a month, and he was already responding to the name Max.  We like the name anyway, so it was an easy decision to keep it.  Sonny had been named Rex at the shelter, but he didn’t respond to it, we didn’t really care for it, and besides it is a little too similar sounding to Max.  We were really into The Wire at the time.  Omar was our favorite, but we felt like it was inappropriate for a couple of white people to name their dog Omar, you know?  We decided on Bunny after Major Howard “Bunny” Colvin.  Unfortunately, the reference was lost on everyone and they didn’t see the connection to this tough-guy-with-a-heart-of-gold cop.  People assumed our dog Bunny was a girl, or thought it was just weird.  He was already starting to get used to the name, so we changed it to the rhyming Sonny.  I still like to call him Sonny Bunny though.

Over the last year, we’ve thought of a bunch of other names that fit Sonny so much better.  Not that I would actually name him all of these, but at least they are based on his personality.

• George - because he’s very curious
• Shadow or Predictor - because he stands right behind us or follows us around the house like a shadow, or he tries to “follow” in front by predicting where we’ll go, and yet he’s also very independent and will go exploring as far (or farther than) we let him
• Wiley - ‘cause he’s crafty and a survivor.  We think he could survive in the wild, while Max would not do so well.
• Pickles - I don’t know but it seemed fitting somehow
• Dancer - he loves to stand on his back legs while Matt holds his front paws and makes him dance while singing a song about how Sonny can dance, and he also does his own dance moves when he’s excited
• Hunter - would be too obvious and cliche since he is a hunting dog after all, but he really is into hunting birds and squirrels and rats

He’s Sonny though.  Our Sonny.  

And now we have to choose a name for a human being.  Such a responsibility.  Our son will be stuck with whatever we come up with for his whole life.  And no information about this child to help us out.  Pressure!

-Kelly

In Part 1 of this story, I discuss how we ran the wires for a new circuit serving these ceiling fans and some unexpected trouble that forced us to cut a random hole in our bedroom wall.  Once the wires were all run, Matt had to add 2x6 supports between the joists in the attic and attach the new electrical boxes to them.  From underneath, it looked like this:

Then it was my turn to hit the attic and make up the remaining connections in a junction box.  Like so: (and then nail the junction box to the side of the joist, tuck all wires into the box, and put a cover on it)

I also had to install the switches, both of which presented issues.  In one bedroom, the space in the wall was shallower than normal due to a stud in the way, so I had to use a different electrical box and play around with shims to get it flush with the drywall.

In the other bedroom, the wall was deep enough but not wide enough to accommodate a double gang box (due to another stud!), so I had to use a double-rocker switch.  I actually like that better than the two separate switches.  Here’s what the switches look like in the two rooms:

The extra time it took us to decommission the old wiring, run the new wires and figure out what we were doing forced us to spread out the project over the course of more than one weekend.  And during that time, I started questioning whether those fans we had bought spontaneously were well suited for our space.  I thought that the 52” fan diameter was kind of big for our small bedrooms, but Matt was still liking them.  We inevitably needed to make a trip to Home Depot or Lowes for something or other.  I can’t remember which store it was, but at the front near the checkout lanes we spied a display of ceiling fan/light combos.  The model was not going to be carried anymore and they were on sale for $13 each.  Here is the exact model on Amazon for $80.  Score!  And most importantly, these fans met our criteria: a less huge fan blade diameter, option to install flush to the ceiling without the downrod (our ceilings are not that high), and it had reversible fan blades so we could choose light wood or dark wood color.  We scooped up two of these and later returned the $116/each “5 minute” Hunter fans which we had yet to even attempt installing aside from reading the instructions.

We ran into a few more issues along the way.  One was that we messed up the drywall when we pulled out the old electrical boxes, so we at first had to use some shims to make an even surface for the fan’s mounting brackets to push against.

We have been using the fans with these ugly shims sticking out the top for the past year and a half.  

Fast forward to now, we removed the entire fixture in one bedroom so we could paint the ceiling.  Now that the room is painted, we decided to use the opportunity to make some improvements to the fan.  One thing we did was upgrade the mounting situation.  The fan came with short screws that connected the mounting bracket to the metal electrical box, but we never really thought that was a great way to support it.  We had originally mounted it instead with longer screws that went all the way up into the 2x6 in the attic, but I still never felt 100% satisfied with that solution.  This time we replaced the screws with bolts that go all the way through the 2x6 so there is no way it can come loose over time.

We also purchased a ceiling medallion ($9 at Home Depot) to cover up the broken drywall and provide a flat surface for the mounting bracket and fan canopy to rest against.  The medallion was white, and we decide to try spray painting it to match the fan.

Installation of the canopy involves pushing it up against the ceiling and twisting it to catch on the screws sticking out of the mounting bracket.  We had a little trouble with that part, which we later fixed by adding a large washer and a small washer to the bolts above the mounting bracket.  It’s hard to explain, but it worked.  Unfortunately, we had completely destroyed the paint job on the medallion by then.

Matt was pretty sad.  Not about the medallion so much as just the installation not going well at this stage.  We had really hoped to be finished by this time.  We also realized there were two other problems with the medallion: the silver paint did not match as well as we’d hoped, and the small diameter (10”) was making things more difficult by not allowing enough room to get a screwdriver to the screws sticking out the sides of the mounting bracket.

So we stopped by HD and picked up this 16” medallion instead.  We did not attempt to paint it.  We just slapped it up on the ceiling, and with the help of those extra washers on the bolt, the rest of the installation went smoothly.

We had also recently purchased some new glass shades to replace the ones that came with the fans.  One of the original shades was broken right out of the box, and we’d been living with one exposed bulb on that fan.  Instead of replacing it with the same generic shade, we’ve been casually looking for a set of fancier ones for a long time.  A few weeks ago, we finally found one we love, and that there were actually 6 of them in stock!  Aren’t they gorgeous?

Finally, a happy end to the saga.  We are very happy with the way it turned out, despite all the trouble along the way.

-Kelly

Only 10 weeks left!  The baby will be here before we know it!  He’s about 3 pounds now and quite the little mover and shaker.  Sometimes I cannot believe how much he can move around it in there.  It looks so weird when he does some kind of rolling action and you can see this huge lump move across my belly.  Which is getting pretty big by the way.  

I snapped this picture in our newly painted extra extra bedroom.  You can’t tell because of the bad lighting (we removed the ceiling light/fan to make painting the ceiling easier so there’s just daylight) in this photo, but it’s a light blue and we love it.  We’ll post about that soon.  So much to do, so little time to blog! 

That is my official dog park uniform.

People keep asking if we have a name picked out.  Not even close!  We have time though, and I guess we’ll figure it out like everything else.  

In other pregnancy news, my midwife said I should expect some Braxton-Hicks contractions (or in hypnobirthing lingo, “practice surges” - we have substitute words for a lot of the medical terms, since we’re going for more of a normal/happy vibe and less of a clinical vibe) soon but I haven’t noticed any yet.  Everything is going about as well as can be so far.  My glucose tolerance test was two weeks ago and the results were fine.  The drink was not nearly as bad as I had heard, only about 6 oz of a clear liquid that tasted like flat Sprite with way too much sugar.  I’m eating good food and getting in a few workouts a week plus a couple walks with the dogs.  I’m also practicing some of the things recommended in class and books: squatting a few times a day, Kegels pelvic floor exercises, and hypnobirthing relaxation/meditation.  There are a lot of other things I should be doing, and I’ll try to build up over time so it’s not too overwhelming all at once.  My next midwife appointment is today - we’re already to the biweekly checkup phase.

-Kelly

Our first dog as a couple, and my first dog ever, was a Belgian Tervuren named Charlotte.  She came to live with us when she was 11 and we had four wonderful years together before she passed away.  We had a lot of great times, but we also struggled with many health problems over the years: a torn ligament in one leg, digestive issues, incontinence, and finally a diagnosis of Cushing’s disease with its accompanying symptoms of hair loss, skin problems, excessive water consumption and urination, UTIs, and loss of muscle tone.  That took its own slew of diagnostic tests to nail down, but it was worth it because the medication made a huge difference in her quality of life and ours too.  We we regulars at the vet’s office for those years.  It was hard to deal with emotionally as well as practically.  I hated knowing my girl was uncomfortable and spent a lot of time worrying and thinking about how to make things better for her.

Fast forward to today: Max and Sonny just had their annual checkup and vaccines.  They are very healthy, and I don’t take that for granted.  Even simple things like having a good appetite.  There was a time years ago when Matt and I had a conversation just about every day that went something like: “How was her poop today?”  ”Pretty good.”  ”Awesome.”  Now we only mention poop if it’s out of the ordinary, or to comment on how nice it is that Sonny uses the edges of the yard while Max goes right in the middle of the yard if the mood strikes.

I hope they stay healthy for many years to come, and we will do our best to make that happen.  We’ve been on the other side and know how hard it is.

To healthy pets!

-Kelly

Recently I was exploring our Tivo’s perk of offering podcast-like content.  The quality is excellent and this show, The Wood Whisperer, was a real find.  I have at least two friends who I consider to be fine wood workers, one professionally, the other as a hobbyist; I don’t at all consider myself to be even near to having such a level of skill.  I’m more of the “see nail, pound it” ilk but as I delve deeper into our projects I’m seeing that one day I’m might step into the light.  Until then, this show (and of course, Tom Silva and Norm Abram of This Old House), are drawing me closer.

Trimming out our windows and building the mantle were baby steps for me.  Sometimes I feel like I’m speaking first year spanish when it comes to woodworking/carpentry terminology so tonight I decided to solidify a few vocab words.  Here’s the back of one of my GTD hipster pocketbook notecard drawings that I filled in the blanks on:

And here is the Anatomy of Window Trim drawing (from This Old House) that taught me what words I was actually looking for:

-Matt

We’ve only lived in the house 2 years + 9 months, and this is the first time any paint has been applied to a surface in the house.  Sure, we’ve cut a lot of holes in the walls, ripped out windows and removed sills and a mantel, but this is the first time we’re attempting to make the walls look better.  Ok, technically Matt did already put trim on all the new windows and the front door, but it’s only primed and not painted.  

Turns out things get a little tricky when there’s a funky texture on the wall and you have to patch a big hole in the drywall.  We think we found a good solution to that, which we’ll share when we can show the final result.  Stay tuned!

-Kelly

It seems like lately I keep hearing about oxytocin, the “love hormone.”  Within the last month or so, I have learned something new about oxytocin - and various ways in which it affects my life - from at least 4 or 5 different sources.  Isn’t that kind of weird?

My pregnancy books and hypnobirthing class talk about it because oxytocin plays an important role in labor, breastfeeding, parent-baby bonding, and maternal behavior.  If you’ve had a baby, you’ve probably heard of oxytocin and its synthetic cousin, Pitocin, which is often used to induce labor and increase the strength of contractions.  Pitocin doesn’t cross the blood-brain barrier so many of those beneficial effects are thought to not occur the way they do with natural oxytocin, some of which is released directly into the brain.  It can even interfere with the release of endorphins and natural oxytocin, which is one of the reasons we’ll try to avoid using it unless there is a medical necessity. 

I also heard about oxytocin last month when I listened to the audio book of “Animals in Translation” by Temple Grandin.  [Aside: This book is one of the most interesting things I have read lately and I highly recommend it if you are at all interested in animal behavior, animal welfare (including info you can apply to make life better for the animals you care about), autism, psychology, neuroscience, or evolutionary biology.  I actually own a paper copy of the book but never got around to reading it until I realized I could also get the audio book from my local library.  I’m getting into audio books lately because I can “read” while doing chores, patching drywall, or driving.  If your library doesn’t have it you can get it here.]

Anyway, Temple mentioned that oxytocin may play a role in autism (some autistic people lack a certain oxytocin receptor gene) and also that oxytocin is released in both humans and animals when we stroke them.  That may be one of many reasons pets make us happy and can even improve our health.  Temple suggested that having pets might even make us better parents because of the oxytocin boost and its effect on human-human relationships.

Finally, yesterday I listened to a piece on NPR’s Talk of the Nation about how oxytocin is released not only when we pet animals, but even look at them or interact in other ways.  There was a lot of other interesting stuff in the story about therapeutic effects of animals on people with a whole range of physical, mental, and emotional issues.  It’s worth a listen too.

I would be fascinated by all of this no matter what, but it seems especially relevant to me right now.  My thoughts are often consumed with visions of our baby’s impending arrival, and I spend as much time as I can every day interacting with our dogs because it just feels great to be with them.  I’ve been feeling very happy and lovey already… I wonder what will happen when this child is actually born.  I hope there is no such thing as oxytocin overdose.  And I’ll have to watch out for a possible crash afterward.  Maybe I can combat it by putting myself and the baby in a pile of snuggly dogs to keep my oxytocin levels from plummeting.

-Kelly

Oxytocin molecule image from Wikimedia Commons.  Other images are linked to where I got ‘em.

This was the scene I came home to one evening last week.  When I called home from work toward the end of that day, Matt told me “you don’t need to rush home anytime soon.”  I responded with a sarcastic thanks.  Of course it wasn’t because he didn’t want to see me, it was because all this was going on.  Please note that there are FOUR nail guns on the living room floor.  It was no problem for me to stay away longer because 1) I had plenty of food at work, 2) I had plenty of work to do, and 3) I needed to stop by Lowe’s on the way home to buy paint for the bathroom and one of the bedrooms.  Colors to be revealed when we get the painting done, which should be within the next week or two.  When I walked in the front door, Matt was literally holding up the TV trying (and failing) to get it clipped on to the wall mount bracket.  My timing was lucky; it’s a two person job.  But just look how proud he was:

And I’m proud too.  I love it that my hubby does things like this.  See Matt’s posts about how he did it and his SketchUp drawing of how it will look once the last bits of trim are added.

-Kelly

The above picture is the perfect example of the dogs’ preferred sleep positions.  Sonny likes to curl up into a little ball, while Max spreads out as much as possible, often on his back with legs in the air.  Of course they sometimes deviate; Sonny can stretch out (never on his back though) and Max curls up on occasion.  I also like it when they take the same position.  How cute is this?

I have been thinking about my own sleep position.  Books and internets will tell you that a pregnant lady should not sleep on her back because the weight of the uterus and baby presses down on a major vein which can make some women lightheaded or pass out, and can also stress the baby.  I really prefer to sleep on my back, so I asked my midwife about it at my appointment on Friday.  She said that while it’s not a big deal if I do end up on my back during the night, I really should try to sleep on my side as much as possible.  The left side is best, but right side is OK.  I’ll try putting a pillow behind me so I don’t roll over.

-Kelly

That means we have 12 weeks - less than 3 months - to go!  The little guy is kicking, rolling, and doing some strange other movements throughout the day and night.  He’s strong.  Sometimes I worry he’ll kick me in the bladder and make me pee.  Note to self: keep an extra pair of pants at work just in case.  Other note to self: do more pelvic floor exercises (also known as Kegels).  All in all, I still feel great.  I’ve had a little bit of heartburn, but not too bad.  Our hypnobirthing classes continue, and the more we practice the relaxation and visualization techniques, the more I like it.  Today after my midwife appointment I had to get some blood drawn for the 1-hour glucose tolerance test, and right after the phlebotomist put in the needle I realized I should have tried going into a relaxed state or mentally numbing my arm before she did it to see how well I could do.

In other news, I love maternity pants!  They are like pajamas.  Why can’t regular pants be like that?

Now it’s time for me to do a little workout.  I was hoping to avoid diastasis recti (separation of the abdominal muscles), but I think it’s happening anyway.  There’s so much conflicting information out there.  Some say you should do certain core exercises to prevent diastasis recti, while others say you should not do those exercises or that you should do none.  I’ve been avoiding crunches and similar movement, but I still do standing core work and some other stuff.  Oh well, I can’t worry about it too much.

-Kelly

Starting at the end and working backward.  I finished building the majority of our mantel the other day.  I used Google’s free application, SketchUp, to crystallize the final design.  The original mantel looked like this:

Kelly came up with the idea to replace our old oil furnace with a highly efficient Mantis gas fireplace.  When we decided it was the right thing to do, we also rearranged the whole living room.

Once we improved the living room layout, part of which involved purchasing a flat screen, I proceeded to build a structure around the old brick chimney/fireplace. I didn’t mention it when I posted about building the structure how I tied into the wall framing and the mantle top.  I basically screwed 2x4 legs into the wall framing.  The legs each incorporated two 2x4s tied together in an L-shape with some 1/2” plywood to give me enough room to run 2x4 horizontals across the front of the chimney.  Then I built a couple of rectangles out of 2x2s so that any plywood facade could be tied into framing.  Here’s what I started with the other day:

Next, I used 18 gauge 1” nails (as I recall) to attach bead board and some finish grade plywood to the sides and top center of the mantle.  I had a good supply of bead board I had purchased during the summer for prototyping the exterior soffit (but then abandoned using bead board thus leaving me with a surplus of 1 1/2 4x8’ sheets) so I decided it would help distinguish the columns I was envisioning on the right and left.  Here are some links to the soffit project (my post; Kelly’s post) and looking back I see that we need to post the final caulked and painted photos because the finished version looks really good.

Taking down the mounted TV was a definitely a 2-3 person task but I managed to not throw out my back or make a $900 mistake when I brought it back down off the wall.  Ever since I had mounted the TV I had been a bit nervous about it not crashing off the wall so getting it down and knowing I was going to build a much stronger backing was a real motivation for getting this project underway.  Once the TV was down there was no going back because God knows we couldn’t survive another day without watching The Closer :-).

Here I have the 3/4” cabinet grade plywood fastened to the wall with screws and 12 gauge nails.  I’ve started nailing in the MDF 1x6” across the top of the mantle and on the base, 1x4” and 1x3” legs on the left column.

Before I attached the legs, I had to build out from the 2x2 and 2x4 structure at the edges around the fireplace flange so that I would have a single plane to attach the MDF.  When I previously fastened the plywood, I left a buffer of about 1/2” so that I wouldn’t have to cut the plywood perfectly so that it would be flush with the outside of the mantle and the inside (near the flange).  I ripped down (using my table saw setup) some MDF 3/8” strips to get me close to the plane I wanted.  This helped me get flush in three dimensions (with the plywood and into the fireplace opening with the plane of the 2x2s).  It’s hard to see but when your strips are very small, MDF splits pretty easy when you hit it with a nail so I switched over to staples.  One split I had to rip out and put in a small piece (Robert had a name for this practice/piece but I can’t remember it at the moment).  While my work wasn’t perfect, I decided it was good enough and pushed on.

Before remounting the TV I put 1/4” bead board across the breadth of the plywood backer.  I needed to cut one sheet into two 42” tall sections so that the beads would line up vertically and so that I could use the lap edging that adorns the long sides of bead board (the lap edging allows you to butt the long side of the sheets together so that the joint just looks like another bead).

If you made it this far… thanks!  Now go back to the beginning and hopefully you’ll appreciate the final (almost) product.  After I re-attached the TV mount, Kelly helped me get the TV back on the mounting arm.  Fortunately for me, she came home at the perfect time—all of the construction was done and I was starting to sweat bullets that I couldn’t get the weighty TV back on the the mount by myself.

To finish the project I need to run some more MDF vertically toward the ceiling from the top of the mantel.  In my mind this will carry the outside lines of the two columns up toward the ceiling and emphasize the chimney.  We also need to finalize how these legs will someday tie into crown molding: so there is a horizontal detail at the very top of the bead board (where it meets the ceiling) that still needs to be worked out.

Thanks for reading!

—Matt