The stairwell saga, the end! (the not so dramatic reveal)

Posted by on Apr 30, 2012 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

Our stairwell painting project is definitely not a wow-er.  I wish it was – I put a lot of work into that silly little dark stairwell!  Sadly, it pretty much looks the same as it did before, just better and cleaner and neater.  Wanna see?  Let’s consider this my not-so-big reveal…

Here’s where we started…

The stairwell before pic - lots of patching

(See all those patches?  Yep.  Our stairwell was just that disasterous.)

Fast forward a couple of months and a lot of paint (BM Edgecomb Gray on the walls, and Snowfall White on the stringers, trim and doors) and here’s what that same little stairwell looks like now…

Stairwell BM Edgecomb Gray and Snowfall White

One of my favourite improvements is the mirror at the bottom of the stairs.  It’s called Melissa (yep – that’s half the reason why I bought it!) and I found it on clearance at Sears a while back (the other reason why I grabbed it up!)  Rona still sells this same mirror at full price (see here), so I’m quite proud of my lovely little bargain.  :)  It’s a dark, windowless little stairwell and this just seems to brighten the landing up a bit (plus I just think it’s pretty!)

Mirror in Edgecomb Gray stairwell - Melissa by AZ Trading

Oooh!  And see those lovely stringers near the bottom of the pic?  They weren’t always so lovely.  That loveliness is the result of a whole lot of filler (there was a huge gap between the stringers and the wall originally that yours truly fixed up with loads of caulking), careful (crazy time consuming!) taping (click here for pics of the groovy green tape stripes I had going for a while) and a lick of paint.

Stringers painted BM Snowfall White with Edgecomb Gray walls

Painted stringers BM Snowfall White

Just looks so much cleaner now.  :)

The boob light at the top of the stairs has been replaced by Ikea’s amazing Alang

Alang light from Ikea at top of Edgecomb Gray stairwell

(Alang is indeed a-lovely, non?)

And I painted both the doors to the upstairs bedrooms.  They were originally wood-grain and coated in what appeared to be a gazillion layers of 1940s varnish.  The white is way better (if you ask me!)

Snowfall White doorway little 1940s house

I heart our doorknobs.  They’re old and aged and imperfectly perfect.

Little 1940s doorknob door painted BM Snowfall White

Lastly we added a mirror at the top of the stairs.  Afterall, one must make sure she’s presentable before greeting her public.  ;)

Mirror

And poof!  The stairwell is done.  Ish.  I’d like to eventually replace the thick brown (leaf-patterned) runner with something fun or striped or something like that, but for now it’s in good shape so despite that it’s brown (did I mention that it’s brown?  Yep.  It’s brown…) it’s staying, for a while at least.  And I’d like to add something to that wall at the very bottom of the stairs (a pic from our wedding [almost 4 years ago] perhaps?  We should really start printing those at some point…) but that’s not an urgent stairwell upgrade at the moment either.

For now, it’s better!  If you didn’t know I’d put weeks (and weeks and weeks) of weekend-work into that little dark stairwell, you’d just think that it’s a fresh clean stairwell.  But it’s the projects that you don’t notice that add the most value, I think.  At least I hope.  :)

 

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