The upstairs hallway and stairwell, continued.

This past week I've been plugging along on the upstairs hallway. Ian and Windy had fixed the walls to the point where it just needed a little fine tuning and some paint. At this point right now, the hallway has seen:
• Ian and Windy fixing the plaster/drywall and giving it a first prime
• a second prime to all surfaces
• 2 coats of ceiling paint (Muresco. It hides so many sins.)
• reattached the ceiling light
• 2 coats of wall paint (Ben Moore Regal in "Ewing Blue", which has turned out a little more coastal/beachy/relentlessly cheerful than I anticipated, even thought I tried swatches.)
• cleaned and reattached the wall plates
• Ripped out the carpet on the stairs
• 2 coats of primer on the stairs
• 1/2 a coat of Ben Moore Floor and Patio paint in white on the stairs. (Doing the every-other-stair technique.)

I had swatches all over that hallway.
That blue gets Really Cheerful when there's a whole wall of it.

Cheerful blue from one end. I need a better lightbulb.

Cheerful Blue from the other side.
Here it almost looks white, unless you have white to compare it to, which leads us to...

Here it is next to white. It's a lot brighter in person.

I was painting these walls and finally couldn't take the carpet on the stairs any more. I mean, I was so carefully fixing this space, I couldn't just leave the stairs. Last week I got out the wreaking bar, yanked up the carpet and tack strips, carefully filled most of the holes, sanded it and started painting that too.

Why Not.

I couldn't take it.

Even if that cat loved sharpening her claws on it and rolling around on it,
I couldn't do the carpet any more.

Demo is my favorite part.

There was padding under there, but you couldn't really tell by walking on it.
It was so dirty.

There was a reddish brown and dark green in the middle; grey, and at least 2 coats of different light blues on the edges. Why waste the paint if you're just going to carpet it?

At some point, probably when they put on the back bedrooms, they replaced the bottom two treads with left over hardwood floor scraps.

One coat of primer! Already so much cleaner!

Second coat of primer! On to the real white paint.

That's what I've been up to. I've ordered some better matching hardware for the closet doors, as well as a fancy custom handrail to replace the very generic rail that was there. Originally, the stairwell probably never had a rail, but modern codes frown on that sort of thing.

At this point, I can finish painting the stairs. Then I want to wait for the wall paint to cure for a little bit so I can tape off parts of it and paint the trim. Then it's the hardware  and the hallway will be done for now. I will still need to refinish 2 closet doors, but that can wait until winter.

I can't wait to call this area done.