One of our very first posts last year was about a simple house project: installing a handrail in our stairwell. Well, over a year later and it's complete. Almost. We tore down all of the horse hair plaster on the walls and ceiling, put insulation between our unit and next door, replaced the walls and ceiling with sheetrock, trimmed the door frames with moulding, cleaned up the stairs and finally, installed a handrail.
The ceiling was the biggest headache. There is another set of stairs leading up to the attic. In 1926, when the house was built, they created a smooth "bubble" over the bottom of the stairs with plaster. We originally thought we could replace all the "straight" parts ourselves and just hire someone to do the "bubble". Well, the quote was ridiculous, so Brian and I decided to try to attempt it ourselves. What's a few more weeks, right?
We are psyched with the results. Instead of trying to create a smooth bubble, we decided to measure and cut sheetrock to line the bottom of the attic stairs. It creates more headroom and we love the look.
Brian has been incredible throughout this entire process. I know it looks like a simple stairwell, but this project has been larger than anything we could have ever imagined. Neither of us had ANY experience with carpentry or drywall, yet with a little help from friends, online research, and A LOT of patience, we did it!
So, the only part not complete is the baseboard moulding. We've concluded that it's just too much for us to figure out. Anyone know a good, reasonable carpenter? Ah, who knows? We didn't think we could do any of this when we started...
3 comments:
Looks awesome! This stuff is really hard to do- so I'm very impressed.
I'm amazed at you too! we could never handle what you to do to your house...
Congrats on all the hard work! It looks great, and showing the architectural detail of the stairs above is so much more appealing I think!
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