Bed Stuy Reno

Stair and Hall Inspiration Images

Lower Level Stair and Hall Painting Progress

Lower Level Stair and Hall Before and After

The stairway and hall between the lower level and the parlor floor was another one of those projects we really wanted to get to, but it just seemed to take a while. The original plaster walls were kind of beat up, so we had them skim coated by our elusive neighborhood plaster guru – when we could find him.

G and I had looked at a lot of hallway inspiration images, and the hallways of our friends and family. We decided on doing an accent wall along the stair because it travels between both floors, and to paint the baseboard and mouldings a lighter complementing color. All other walls and ceilings would simply be painted white. On the lower level, the enclosure under the stairs that closes off the hallway to the basement is all beadboard, and we decided to treat that like it was moulding too – aspirations for large-scale wood stripping had gone out the window a long time ago!

We settled on a rich deep gray-blue, much like one of the inspiration images you see a bove – Benjamin Moore’s “Whale Gray” – for the accent wall, and a lighter blueish-gray for the mouldings – Benjamin Moore’s “Gullwing Gray.”

Primer went up on basically all surfaces, followed by white paint. Then mouldings were painted in, and finally, we cut-in and painted the accent wall.

A note about the stairs: they had been covered in linoleum. I wanted to sand them down to bare wood, but that proved incredibly difficult. Using the edge-sander (I tool I hate with a passion), I was able to get most of the remaining gunk of the tops of the stair treads, but I wouldn’t really call the results “clean.” And I didn’t feel like it passed for “rustic,” either.

The risers were even more difficult to clean than the treads. I couldn’t really get at them with the sander (edge-sander, no way, and the palm sander just wasn’t up to the task). I tried a multitude of stripping products with mixed results, and finally suggested to G, “Hey, let’s do carpet!”

She asked, “What kind of carpet?”

I said, “You know that sort of entry-mat rigid straw-like material?”

Turns out I was talking about Sisal, and G liked it because it was a natural material. So I shopped around, got a few quotes and went with a sketchy outfit I think called Empire Carpet. I say sketchy because they dropped their price in half after I told them I worked for Skanska, and repeated requests to do better. And then I had trouble getting an actual install date. But the guys who showed up to do the work couldn’t have been nicer, and they did a good job. And because Sisal was a special-order carpet (hence kinda pricey), they brought the whole roll with them, and left the leftovers with us, of which there was enough to practically carpet another room. Nice!