An Election Distraction

It's 7:30PM on Tuesday November 3, 2026. Federal midterm elections are being held in the United States, and with them are countless state and local races. Polls are just now closing at locations beholden to Eastern Standard Time.

The central question in this year's election is whether or not voters in the U.S. might be able to tap the brakes before our nation hurtles fully and irrevocably into authoritarianism.

And I can't watch.

I expect many folks who had high hopes for 2016 (or even 2024) know how that feels. So, instead of refreshing the election results into the wee hours or doomscrolling with my Bluesky pals, I'm going to keep myself distracted with an update on the progress at our Akron almost-mansion. I'm also going to keep this nice post by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg open in a browser tab: No Matter what Happens this Week.

Tonight's election distraction post takes a closer look at what we call the Shade Room. It's an interesting moniker since I suspect it was originally designed to maybe be a sun room. That was before the giant oak trees in the backyard assumed their current stature, and before the three season room was added to the north side of the room, and before the giant metal awning was hung above the west windows. Maybe this room got plenty of sun at some point, but it doesn't now. Shade Room it is then.

Since this room didn't really have a designated function (or at least a critical function) in our living arrangements, it's ended up being the last room on the first two floors that's getting our attention (The third floor remains out of sight, out of mind, and out of scope right now). 

This is the Shade Room as it appeared in the listing when the house was for sale. You can see the giant metal awning hanging over the windows on the far wall. The door to the right opens to the aforementioned three season room. You'll notice too that this room did not escape the era of faux paneling, though thankfully it's application was limited to the lower quarter of the wall.

More troubling than the paneling itself though was the installers regrettable disregard for the bottom portion of the window trim (and by disregard, I mean they lopped it off. More on that later).

Since this ended up being the last room on the first two floors that we're finishing, its spent a large part of it's time as a staging area for other projects in other rooms. Most of the time, it looked like this (or worse).

If you zoom in on the picture above and look below the window, you can see that we've already removed the paneling from the lower portion of the walls. You can also see more clearly the effect of sawing off the bottom section of the window trim.

This detail shows what we were left with. The lower board was completely removed, and for reasons lost to time, the backband on the window trim was left cut at a 45 degree angle. That's probably not how I would have managed this particular operation, but it's what we were left with.

Reader, I am no finish carpenter. Nor do I claim to have proceeded in this work as a trained professional would. But I have a miter saw, a tape measure, a pencil, a box of finish nails, a hammer, a nail punch, spackle, and some caulk. Sometimes that's all you need.

Shoutout here to Summit Millwork in Cuyahoga Falls for being able to cut to size the trim I needed. Neither the casing nor the backband were "off the shelf" dimensions. I wasn't going to find a match as Lowes. Both had to be cut to order and they did a great job. I chose poplar for this job as I'd worked with it in a frame shop previously. I liked the feel and finish of poplar and wanted something that was a cut above pine but not too hard.

As you can see from the in process photo, spackle was to play a major roll in this project. Notably too, this is the first time in all our work on this house that I was grateful that the previous owners had painted the woodwork. We were going to need all the camouflage we could get!

This photo above shows the new trim in place, as well as the start of our priming. I can't speak to the efficacy of the product as we've done zero testing, but we've been using a lead-encapsulating primer on all painted surfaces under the assumption that everything is lead paint!

And this is what the Shade Room looks like now. I was joking with my wife that I'm going to start calling it the Money Room, because, green. We've still got paper on the floor as we still have a little bit of paint and touch up to do. We also want to clean up the hardware on the French windows. I'm really happy with the color and satisfied too with the work we did recreating the missing trim. It's not perfect, but not a lot in this old house is. Honestly, unless you're looking for it (or you've read this blog post), you're not going to notice the difference.

The Shade Room is close then, and with it, we'll have completed patching, prepping, painting and priming a grand total of eleven rooms, two hallways, one stairwell, three closets, and two sets of built ins. Whew! I remember someone remarking at one point that, "All that's left is cosmetic stuff...". Well let me tell you. Cosmetic stuff is a lot of work!!!

Since I like to close out these post with some exterior shots, here's one from our first time hosting trick-or-treaters at the almost-mansion.

We set up our treat table at the bottom of the driveway. That seems to be how a lot of people do it in our neighborhood. We had a lot of kids too! They loved Takis! Dots were surprisingly popular as well. We bought enough that we could be generous with the kids. We even had some drive up traffic! It was a pretty magical night.

It was sometime during the Halloween preparations that I had a chance to reflect a bit on this journey. It's been pretty amazing to go from a house that was wholly uninhabitable, to one we could live in, to one that we can now actually start enjoying. There's still a long way to go, but we've definitely turned a corner.

Now if you excuse me, the night is still young and I need to find my next distraction!