Two Months Later...

Finally...after two months this is what the stairwell to our basement looks like. I keep opening the door just to admire the change, I know its silly but the before of this project was pretty well worn out. Unfortunately or maybe a Freudian slip occurred and I just didn't take any pictures of the before.

I decided a couple of months ago that my stairwell to our basement was badly in need of an update. The carpet was awful, the wallpaper was dated and damaged and the inverted "boob" light fixture just had to go. We stripped the old wallpaper and carpeting and I patched the walls and painting everything a creamy white, this included the stairs. My first idea was to do board and batten on the walls but then I remembered in a post sometime ago that Kim from Savvy Southern Style  posted that she used a bead board wallpaper. Eureka...I was off to the store to find me some wallpaper with a faux bead board look.

The wallpaper went up with no issues, actually it was very easy to work with and the results after it was painted was pretty realistic, certainly a step up from what we had removed.  Lowes carries the bead board wallpaper for $19.99, for some reason I remembered seeing it at Menard's for $12.99 so mine came from Menard's.  I'm not sure if there is any difference in quality but I am plenty happy with what I purchased.

Next I picked out a pretty substantial chair rail and go to work figuring out the pitch that I wanted to use. This was the most difficult part of the project, compound miters don't ya know.  Let's just say that I'm grateful for the dude who invented caulk!

There is a landing on the way to our basement, as where the steps the landing was unfinished.  I found this damaged package of Pergo flooring at Lowes marked down from $45 to $7.  More than enough to cover the landing and it went down with a few snaps and some shoe molding.

The finished landing close up, it was a white washed finished, so for the unfinished steps I tried to somewhat blend the paint to match the look of the landing, eight coats of paint later I decided "its a basement stupid this looks just fine".

 

This is the new fixture that hangs over the landing.  I purchased a lampshade from Lowes and a hanging fixture kit and made my own fixture.  I think the total cost was around $25 and the new look is perfect.

To finish things off I left the hand rails the dark stained finished that have always been for contrast, I added a shelf from Lowes in a similar finish to give the landing a finished look.  I can't believe this project took me this long but there was a lot of downtime between each part of the project.  Today I am relieved and please with the results.

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