Brandon the Builder

In this post I mentioned that Brandon has waxed productive in the shop of late and I promised a brag post. Well, here it is! Brag about Brandon time! And let me tell you, there is plenty to brag about because he has been working hard.

While the boys and I went to the Far Grandma and Grandpa's place for spring break, Brandon stayed home to work at his place of employment and also to work on the older boys' bedroom. He's been working on it most weekends since then.

Not long ago, Onion Ring made a comment to us indicating that he didn't feel happy in his bedroom. We immediately felt guilty because Onion Ring's and Buttermilk Sky's shared bedroom in the basement had been a bit neglected. They didn't even have a working ceiling light, only a closet light and a lamp. So Brandon decided to fix up their room really nice and came up with a bunch of cool ideas which he is now executing. I'm sad that I didn't take any before pictures, but here are some "in progress" pictures.

The first thing Brandon did was to install canned lights in their room. The original fixture was a big, ugly fluorescent light like the kind you might see in a shop, and it wasn't even working. We decided on canned lights because, being in the basement, the room is rather dark and we felt like canned lights would give plenty of light to the room and look nicer than the big, ugly fluorescent light.

The closet used to extend along this entire wall and Brandon took out the right side and put the dresser there.

He trimmed out the closet and the door. (By the way, do you like the vintage door? I have several others and I want to replace all of our interior doors with antique, vintage ones.)

He went around the light switch...

...and the outlet so nicely!

And here is something that Brandon thought up that I think is a really cool idea--faux wainscot.

We're doing this on the cheap, you see, and rather than buying wainscot, Brandon put a chair rail up around the room...

...and then he nailed thin strips vertically along the wall.

He will paint the chair rail and everything underneath it the white trim color. What do you think? Do you think it will look like real wainscot?

And here are the super cool awesome built-ins that he is building. Onion Ring and Buttermilk Sky are so excited to have their own desks, drawers, and shelves. There are a lot of cool details about these that I will show later when it is finished.

Amazingly enough, Brandon usually builds his projects using reclaimed materials. Almost all of the wood used in this room was taken out of dumpsters.

Here are a few things he recently finished in the kitchen: a cutting board...

(It's so pretty I feel bad cutting on it!)

...side panels on the cabinets, including this beautiful one to hide the fridge...

...and crown molding.

And again, most of the wood used in these cabinets came out of a dumpster.

Shall we now sing his praises?

Brandon the builder,
Can he build it?
Brandon the builder,
YES HE CAN!!