The Hall/Stairs and Landing

Firstly, let's remind ourselves of what we were up against.

The lovely light fitting we've been living with. Complete
with the *concrete* they'd used to fill  the channel.

The non-working doorbell

A good shot of the carpet and wall

The hall has been a labour of love (read: pain the ass). But, this most neglected of spaces (so neglected in fact, that it was difficult to find many "before" photos) will be the first thing that people see when they walk in the door. The new looks staircase has helped to create a certain "wow-factor" as you walk through the door but it is let down by the rest.

Preparation wasn't too difficult as the previous owners had kindly stripped most of the wallpaper before we got there. Though, curiously had left the ceiling papered. I guess it is a bit of a reach and seems to follow the pattern of "that looks more difficult, so we'll leave it for some other poor sod" which we've seen all over the house.

The first idea was to just paint it but after a quick test patch we (I) decided against that approach. The finish it left was simply too uneven for such a large area. Re-plastering would have involved quite an outlay as the old plaster was pretty crumbly and may have needed replacing so, as a (much) cheaper alternative we decided on lining paper.

This proved to be more difficult than we'd hoped. The plaster was so dry and crumbly that getting the paper to stick to it was a real pain. The seams peeled up a lot and peeled up even more after the paper was painted. The trick is to paint the wall with a coat or two of wallpaper paste and let it dry first. Then put the paper up. The seams were still popping up but not nearly as bad.

Pasting the wall after I realised this was the way to do it.

No, this seam isn't popping up. It's a trick of the light. What's that under my hand?
A bucket. Oh, you mean the other hand, huh?

New light fitting highlighting the seams. D'oh!

So, then we filled and little bits and stuck down the seams. Then painted with a cream colour and stuck down the seams. Then finally touched up any seams that had been stuck down and then stuck them back down again. There's still a couple to do but I'm sick of them for now.

Some finishing touches. Firstly, some coving in the hall and some moulding to go up the stairs and then a handrail as the top of the stairs is a bit of a deathtrap for unsteady inlaws and increasingly waddly wives.

It looks better now it's painted. I promise.

And then she waddled away. Waddle waddle.

Then, some carpet. Once again, our tame carpet fitter came round in his spare time.

Removal of the non-functioning burglar alarm is on my list. As is painting under the stairs.

And to finish off, paint the no-longer-matching front door a nice, contemporary cocoa bean brown.

The bannister rail

Replacing the bannister spindles (balusters, technically; who knew?) which had been inexplicably removed by previous occupant or occupants unknown proved more difficult than it should have done. It seems that they removed the old balusters and filled in the rebate that they sat in somehow. This meant that I had to work out a way of fixing new ones securely.

I didn't want to rebate out the stringer (I think that's what it's called) as I didn't know what was in there in terms of screws/nails etc and brackets would have been expensive. In the end I settled for a large dowel drilled and glued through the top of the rail and two or three big nails driven through the bottom of each baluster into the string, all topped off with wood filler. I broke two drill bits during the process and the balusters at the top required a slightly different approach but all in all it worked pretty well. It also came in nice and cheap at ~£15 for the timber from the timber merchants not B&Q where the same material would have been 4 or 5 times the price. Covers for timber from now on.

The non-standard spacing of only 7cm (instead of the regulation 10) between balusters would help to reinforce the joinery in the unlikely event of someone falling through it too. I would like to claim that this was done on purpose but it was, in fact a miscalculation. I cut a 9.5cm spacer block to ensure that they were all uniform and then bevelled it, effectively reducing it to 6.8-ish. I realised this around the third baluster so it was too late to change it. I estimate that it meant I had to fit 4 or 5 extra spindles but that's not a big problem.

Obligatory "behind bars" shot

These two shots illustrate a couple of more unusual dowel placements
at  the top of the staircase.

Sonia begins cleaning up all the glue and filler.

And a coat of primer before gloss.