Here at Fine Homebuilding, I always scrutinize each new issue to see how it turned out. And like most other readers, I’m amazed by how many subscription postcards fall out of the issue and into my lap. Dear readers, these cards, which in trade lingo are called blow-ins, are a necessary evil of the magazine business (something to do with getting subscribers). Not long ago, however, I actually went looking for some of them.
When I remodeled our kitchen, I added some faux beams to the tongue-and-groove board ceiling to give it a coffered look. I trimmed out the tops of the beams with prepainted crown moldings and touched up the coped joints with a bit of caulk here and there. To shield the unpainted ceiling boards from caulk squeeze-out, I tucked a blow-in between the crown and the boards at each intersection, as shown in the drawing. The cards were just stiff enough to push into place easily, and they were plentiful enough to take care of the entire ceiling with just a few issues’ worth.
Charles Miller, Newtown, CT
