Paintlift

A lot of times cosmetic work can make all the difference in an older home. Admittedly, our house needs more than just cosmetic work, but there are certainly some areas where a little "paintlift" can make an incredible difference. Our hallways are one such area where a little bit of paint (ok, several gallons) can cover up a whole lotta ugly. Enter Exhibit A -- our upstairs hallway after Stuart removed the wallpaper last summer. LAST SUMMER people. That's right, we have lived with it like this for a year and a half. That's about 14 months too long in my book.

And here is a (crummy) picture of our hallway nook taken on our first visit to the house with our real estate agent exactly 2 years ago this month. That green wallpaper was in both the upstairs and downstairs hallways. Can I get a yikes?

So last summer Stuart was able to remove most of the wallpaper. But there was this bit above the stairs that we couldn't figure out how to safely get to to remove. So it sat...

and sat...

and sat.

And finally, with an urge to make our house more presentable for family visiting at Christmas, we decided to hire some guys to come remove the wallpaper AND paint the upstairs hallway and stairwell. We decided to go with Olympic's Bone White for the color. In order to save some money, we had the guys remove wallpaper and paint the walls only. We knew that although it might be painfully time consuming, we could do the trim work ourselves and put a little change back in our pockets. We were very pleased with the work that the paint crew did. After removing the remaining wallpaper, they sanded all the walls, filled all of our cracks (and let me just say, there is no shortage of cracks in our house), and painted. What would have taken us possibly weeks of a few hours here and there took our 2 guys only 2 days!

Before painting the trim, we filled nail holes with our wood filler, sanded, and cleaned the baseboards. Here are some close ups that show how grungy our baseboards and doorframes were.

 

After several coats and many hours of work, our upstairs hallway had its paintlift!

And in case you are super confused by where things are in our house, here's a little reference picture of the upstairs taken with my back to the staircase and the hallway nook directly to my left.

There was a lot of trim and a lot of doors = lots of high gloss white paint.

And here is a shot taken with my back to the master bedroom at the end of the hallway. ::sigh:: so pretty compared to what it used to be!

And a view of the nook.

For anyone wondering, we bought the small rug for the nook and the hallway runner last summer at a rug store in Blowing Rock, NC.

And for some final before and after shots....



I'd say it's a vast improvement. We still need to remove the door hardware throughout the hallway to strip it of paint and give it a new look like we did here and here. Also, we would like to get some more pictures and art on the walls, paint the hallway ceiling, change the lighting, and possibly add crown molding much farther down the road. But for now, we think our inexpensive paintlift looks like a million bucks!

We are still working on the staircase trim and have a gallery wall in progress along the stairwell, so hopefully we will be back to share an update soon!