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Around the House: Stairwell Update

By Dawn Sailors In Around the House, Entry

Well, I didn’t quite meet my deadline to have the rocking chair finished by today, so look for that post tomorrow (for real this time!!). Instead, I thought I’d do a quick post on something that should have been done long ago. This ridiculous project is soooo so so so long overdue (It was on my list of unfinished projects way back when. Yes! Another one to cross off!). I’m actually kind of embarrassed about it. So prepare for a list of excuses and don’t judge me.

When we moved into our house (over two years ago) we knew there was a lot of updating to do (like every single room top to bottom). The start of all that was painting every wall in the house. We knocked it out pretty fast on the main floor, except for this little problem area:

The stairwell from the first to the second floor was so tall and awkward, that we couldn’t reach to paint it, and what made it worse was that being first time homeowners, we didn’t have those little luxuries like, you know, a ladder.

So we switched our focus to other things and just sort of lived with it for a while. Then a little over a year ago, we got a ladder that was tall enough to reach. We also got pregnant. Now, I don’t want to criticize the hubs painting abilities, but let’s just say that I wanted to do this one myself. And he didn’t want my balance impaired pregnant self climbing a ladder over a stairwell just so I could inhale some paint fumes.

So it sat that way for a while longer, while we ignored it. Isn’t it kind of strange how you can just overlook things like this for so long. Since I’ve been un-pregnant for almost a year now, I am out of excuses as to why this isn’t done. I’ve just been putting it off because it seems tedious and we’ve already lived with it for so long that it’s easy to keep living with it.

Luckily for me, my dad was so bothered by it that he insisted on driving two hours and painting it for us. Ha… ahhhhh, cue embarrassment. (But seriously, thanks Dad.) So that is what he and I did on my day off on today. And I have to say, now that it’s done, I wish we would have just done it sooner!!

It wasn’t quite easy though. I’m glad Dad’s not afraid of heights. Oh and I’m just going to go ahead and apologize upfront for the quality of these photos. It is incredibly awkward to try to photograph a dark stairwell at all, and even more awkward to try to do it with a baby on your hip and someone on a ladder above you. Sorry.

Even with the ladder we had to get creative to reach a few spots.

Luckily I found this little guy (a painting pad of some kind I bought a long time ago for some project or another) and this extension pole in our basement storage room. That allowed us to reach the last few strips that we couldn’t get to with the ladder.

And after only a few hours of effort, here’s the finished product!

Much better! So glad I can cross that off my list and stop apologizing for it every time someone comes over, lol. Now I just need to do something about that brass light fixture…

Happy Friday!

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