Saturday was a banner day at the LaRue estate as the furniture finally returned to the dining room.

It took the better part of the day, but I placed crown molding, chair rail and baseboard around the room, as welling as trimming out the windows and the doorway.

I tried a new method of application involving attractive pre-cut corner blocks and decorative door posts and I was very impressed with the speed and ease of application, as well as the beauty of the end result.

Without mitered corners to contend with on the overhead pieces, it was almost too easy. I still had to miter the chair rail, but that was only about one-third the effort it would have taken to miter just one piece of that crown mould. Since it goes on at an angle to start with, I never did like trying to cut it into and around corners.

The room now has an elegant look about it, which is a large-scale improvement over where it was before.

In looking back over the job, I had covered paneling that had been painted over with drywall, replaced two out-dated windows, removed a sliding glass door that had divided the living room and dining room and replaced that with a proper entryway and also applied a bevy of attractive mouldings to the floors, walls and ceilings.

That doesn't count the slight extension of the wall dividing the kitchen and dining room or the similar update of the hallway, which has four doorways that needed new moulding.

To celebrate all of my accomplishments, I walked a circle all the way through the house without tripping over anything. Since we have doors connecting everything, it makes it easy to get from one point to another if the furniture is where it is supposed to be.

The other problem, which is not entirely mine, is that the furniture, from nick-knacks to paddy-whacks, is covered with a thin coating of dust from the earlier drywall work and other construction.

As I walked back into the house through the front door, I was faced with the newly painted and framed twin windows looking out over the nice view behind the house.

The wallpaper and new paint are set off nicely by the trim, all painted some variation of gloss white.

Now the kitchen is all that stands between me and outright victory at this point, but I feel sure that it, too, will succumb to my remodeling efforts.

Unless my back first succumbs to the work and I find myself back in whine and complain mode for a few weeks' healing time. While it has grumbled a few times about the work, everything really has gone remarkably well for me physically in this project. I haven't stapled myself, smashed a finger, bled profusely or ended up in traction. For me, that's pretty good.

As I go on to the kitchen, I hope my optimism holds true. Most of the walls already are covered with fresh wallpaper, with the exception of the two dividing walls that were removed earlier. I'm very pleased that they are gone at this point, even though it made quite a bit more work for me.

It allows easier entry from the back door, which is on one end of the kitchen and used to open up facing a dividing wall. I like open spaces, especially when faced with the alternative of a wall that really serves no purpose. Now that the wall is removed, the kitchen seems much larger than before and more light can reach the entire room from the windows and the door glass. The area around the stove always seemed dark and even a little gloomy before, but now it's brighter and more cheerful.

I also opted to resurface one exterior wall with drywall while I was doing the job. It's a continuation of the dining room wall and I thought it looked a bit odd with the transition. It also gives some limited temperature and sound insulation, although the amount is debatable.

Mostly it's just there for appearance.

If the plans continue to progress, I should be able to finish all the work on everything by next weekend, only about 10 days away if you're reading this now.

As usual, I've let the construction work take precedence and the yard work, landscaping, gardening and work on my long-forgotten building.

The building looks like the site of a drive-by junking. The purpose of building it was to get my tools and things in order so that I could find them quickly and easily. Instead, I find that they are more scattered and even harder to find than they were before.

However, I hope to soon have the opportunity to spend a few days getting my work bench, vice and grinder installed, peg board hung on the walls and tools sorted and displayed.

Until that time, I will just continue to suffer through random digging through boxes looking for each and every item that is needed. I must admit that I usually find several things that I had forgotten that I had.

As I write this, I still have yet to start up my string trimmer the first time this year and some areas of the yard are looking worse for it. But I know I'll get around to it all sooner or later. It's just a matter of time until either I or the weed death can find a way to take care of all those sorts of problems. In this case, I'm putting my "one track mind" to use productively to complete the task at hand before moving on. It's a new thing for me and I like it better already.