Upstairs Hallway

Here is a before and after picture of the upstairs hallway. This shows how far that railing went around. Painting the twisted and fancy shaped pieces, was a bit tedious, but gave it some life again on the cheap!

The carpet looks great, and we got a good deal for it, and had it installed, in all 4 bedrooms as well as this upstairs hallway and runner down the stairs. But you can see by the after picture, how much better the walls were looking.

There had been a wallpaper border (this house had wallpaper everywhere!) I got creative with a sponge mop. After wetting it down, from the upper hallway standing at the railing, I then taped a wallpaper scraper to a broom handle and scraped off the wallpaper without any scaffolding! I thought that was creative! Then painted with a roller on a long stick, and used a ceiling edger on the stick as well.

Creative Renovating

The upstairs hallway had a wallpaper border all around the top, including the area over the stairwell.

There is no landing in this stairwell, making the ceiling two storeys high. The border was dry strippable, meaning the pattern part ripped off easily, but it leaves behind the brown backing paper. You then wet this and scrape it off. Sounds easy enough, but unless we can rent some serious scaffolding, this job has been left for now.

Until I got creative! I pulled a completely redneck move. I took a long handled mop and soaked the paper border over the stairwell, from the second floor hallway. I then took the wallpaper scrapper blade and "duct taped" it to a pole (used for painting ceilings etc) and proceeded to scrape off the paper. This actually worked! It fell all over the place, and took a lot of mopping to get it really wet, but it worked.

Did the same trick when it came to painting the primer on the wall. I "duct taped" the trim paint brush to the pole, and carefully edged the paint. Not too bad at all! No one could believe how I did this when they came in to do work on the house today. I promised Jeremy, that not once was I in danger. I did not go anywhere near a ladder, just got creative with the extension pole!