Boring, very boring. I wanted to fill up this space. So I decided on moulding! Moulding, the answer to all problems. It also has a very high ceiling. It needed some interest to break it up. Here is an idea of how high it is:
Now I, foolish me, decided to paint this whole stairway myself awhile ago. I did not use any type of ladder, and pulled this off by attaching trim pads to extension poles, etc. It was a stressful day, to say the least. Here is a pic of what I had to contend with:
Yeah, my family was afraid I was going to kill myself in the process. One of them suggested I use a pogo stick! Haha!! But here it was when I was done painting:
It turned out pretty well. The paint is Pismo Dunes by Benjamin Moore. It has a definite pink undertone, but it is a neutral brown color. This worked out for me since I love the color pink. After I painted this, I wanted picture frame moulding and a chair rail, and I wanted to do the outside of the picture frames in a contrasting paint color. We did this before I had a blog, so my husband masterminded this whole thing and had to calculate the angles since it's not a typical 45 degree miter cut since it's on a stairway. We determined we wanted 6 picture frame boxes at 2" apart (2" from bottom, from top, and in between). I painted the boxes out beforehand so my husband knew what size I wanted. The paint color that's contrasting is Manchester Tan by Benjamin Moore. Here is the progress on the faux wainscoting:
Looks great, right? Hubby also installed a little granite shelf at the bottom of the stairs. This used to just angle up to the wall, but he built it out and made a shelf.
I have a disease, people, and that is changing things up. So after living with that for over a year, I decided to paint everything below the chair rail in a semi-gloss white. I think the white adds nice contrast to the brown paint. Here's the paint I used (Sherwin Williams Extra White Semi-Gloss) with my trusty 2" angled paint brush from ACE Hardware and a pic of how hard it was to cover that old paint. No, I did not use a primer first, which is probably not wise. It took me 4 coats on the lighter color and 5 coats on the darker to cover the old paint.
Here it is all pretty and done!
(Ignore the family-friendly gate.) I bought some cheap frames from Walmart and printed some photos in black and white and hung those. I know it looked nice before with the contrasting paint, but I like this look, too. I think the stairway has nice visual interest now.
So next up: tear out the carpet on the stairs and install treads and risers. That will be a job, my friends!!
