Molding Madness Midway

I have a serious pet peeve.  Lack of molding.  I am a judgemental S.O.B. when it comes to not having any molding.  I think it comes from going to so many people's "in-progress" houses when I was little.  Out in the country, "in-progress" is practically a style movement.  When I told my mother that my pet peeve was molding, she pointed out there still isn't have ceiling or baseboard molding in the house I grew up in.  Hmmm.  Good point, Mom.  I'm sure Freud would have something to say about that. 

In any case, when we first put in the new windows I told the husband all about my lack-of-molding phobia.  He took it serious (dear thing), but a bunch of other stuff was actually pressing and somehow we've been living in a bedroom without molding for almost a year now.  It probably helps that the summer view looks like this:

All that greenery and sunshine is very distracting.  But if you look close, you can see the telltale stripe of foam insulation.  Ugh.  A closer look at the yellow heinousness?

So yellow.  So foamy.  <shudder>  I also have a foam phobia, but that's another story.  (Other than that, I'm not afraid of a thing, I swear.  I heart spiders.)

So after a long summery, sunny, delicious hiatus, we finally turned our attention back to our poor languishing house.  There are three major things on my to-do list right now, but molding is at the very tip-top of the list!  The first step in this arduous process was to make a tracing of the profile of the original period-appropriate molding found downstairs, take it to a custom molding shop, and promise our first born child in exchange for a custom molding knife.  Seriously, that stuff is expensive!  Once they have the tool made though, they can make a ton of molding for you, no sweat.  We had ours made out of really nice pine because the husband is a wood snob. 

(Ooh..So piney.  So profiley.  Such good wood grain.)

Once we had the molding itself made (which took about a month,) the husband lovingly cut it to length and then sanded down the areas where it would attach:

(Cue wifely freakout about scraping off the walls around the windows.  But he covered the bed and the duvet cover I love so much with so much care that I can hardly complain too much, right?  Repeat after me: "it must get worse before it gets better...")

Then finally everything was nailed in place!

WOOT!  Check it out in daylight:

This is the phase of the project where I cruise into the room every ten minutes just to ogle it and then gush about it.  Course, this phase is always followed by the interminable-sanding-which-cues-impatient-wife-teeth-grinding phase, which isn't pretty.  We're STILL not done, although we have moved on to:

Blue tape phase!!  OK, not quite as exciting as it sounds, but it IS exciting in that we are one step closer to having beautiful white molding that matches the rest of the room.  I know some of you bare wood people out there are going to freak out that we are painting it.  However, even the resident wood snob is resigned this time.  A.) the rest of the house has white molding.  B.) the rest of the room has white molding.  C.) no one is up for stripping the rest of the windows in this house (I believe there are 27.)

So there you have it, the molding midway.  Our goal is to be done with the whole thing by the end of the month.  What do you think about white molding?  Crisp and clean or go au naturel?