Here is our stairway when we purchased the house. It was dark and tight. Even when we did our walk through I said to my husband, it felt a little small. So skip to move in day, and wouldn't ya know..."sorry ma'am, but this bedroom furniture isn't going to fit up THOSE stairs." AGH!! A full sized box spring wouldn't even make the turn. I was a mess. What were we gonna do??
Needless to say after a month of sleeping in the living room, I had enough. So we called a general contractor and got to business. I knew the side wall was load bearing and since we weren't about to tackle that kinda mess ourselves, it had to be done.
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I painted the staircase and rail and we hung bead board down the hallway. Please ignore the ugliness of the staircase wall, we plan on painting the wall and adding bead board here too. |
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| Entrance from living room side. |
We ended up removing the side wall, raising the header beam, and adding two new stairs. We discussed other options with our contractor and in the end this was the best choice for us. I painted the stair risers and the railing using Benjamin Moore's "Simply White" in semi gloss. It's my favorite white and we have used it on all the trim and bead board we have installed in our home.
Now, we can take things directly up the stairs instead of trying to make that small 90 degree turn. Finally, our family can enjoy the upstairs of our home too! I still have no idea what the previous owners did...it baffled our contractor as well. ;)
