Painting The Stairwell + Plans

Even when we painted the great room the first time around, we never painted the stairwell for some reason. Well, actually, the reason is probably that it required major ladder acrobatics and I'm not too keen on heights. I guess it all worked out because we ended up repainting the great room and now that we are 100% sold on the color, were ready to finally tackle our fears and those multi-sheened walls.

Yes, two different sheens on these walls in kind of interesting places.

Another issue we needed to address was the overlapping wainscoting paneling on the far wall. For the past year, I have been saying I want to take it off. But it was REALLY glued on there. Also, the trim on the bottom of the window is actually just doubled as the trim on the top of the paneling. And then there are just 3 little section of baseboard on the landing. Hmph.

It's been a head scratcher, but we finally determined the best route for this area is to paint everything, including walls, trim, current baseboards and the wainscoting all the same color, Hazy Skies by Benjamin Moore (color matched to Valspar's Optimus line) in an eggshell finish--which is the same warm green-y putty we painted the rest of the first level. I've seen this technique--paint all the walls and moldings the same color--done all over the place recently (this entry is a favorite), and I'm always impressed with how fresh and modern it looks.

I spent most of my day during naps and preschool trimming everything out hugging the stairs and then after the girls were in bed, stretched on a ladder. To get the left side of the wall, where the height from floor to ceiling is staggering, I taped a paint brush to a rod extender and ever so carefully edged my way across the wall. It's not perfect, but it worked! I ended up painting the wainscoting by hand, too, so the texture would remain smooth and getting in the grooves was proving a little challenging with a roller anyway.

Once Chris arrived with the roller and an extra long extender, it took less than an hour to finish up. Here's how it looks in the morning.

I love how calm it looks! Painting everything one color really minimized some of the weird things going on. Originally we planned on eventually ripping this paneling off, but I actually really like the subtle texture it adds now that it's all painted.

We still have quite a few plans for the stairwell, including:

•  Paint banister
•  Paint walls
•  New light fixture
•  Mechanical blinds. We absolutely need something on this window because at night, you can see in our house perfectly. The blinds that were here were fine except unreachable and so, unclose-able. We found a few great remote control options we can't wait to show you.
•  Tear up the carpet and lay the same ceramic wood we have throughout the rest of the main level.
•  Install baseboards going down the whole staircase to connect with the trim on the main level
•  Lay a carpet runner.
•  Hang some family pictures?

We hope to get a light (and baby gate!) in place in the next week and will tackle the stairs after the new year. I didn't realize how much the stairwell was bothering me until I woke up to it all painted and felt so happy and relieved. Onward!