The Great renovation of the stair case

After the kitchen was done the only other part of the house that was outright nasty was the walls and ceiling above the staircase. We put it off as long as we could but new it had to be done, so... first we had to pull off all the layers of nasty wallpaper.

Can you see the big ole cracks between the sheet rock? When we pulled of the wall paper we realized they they never really finished this in the first place, rather they covered it up with wall paper! There were like 3-4 layers of nasty wall paper, each perfect tributes to the era of which they belonged... I will never understand the appeal of puke green during the 70's.

This part of the ceiling wasn't supported at all... it was primarily being held in by the wall paper! So Nate tore it out and put in a stud to attach a new piece of drywall too.

See all the dirt falling? We were hoping it wasn't asbestos. It was black dust from the ceiling and we were coughing it up for the next 24 hours.

Here is Nate's patch job. Can you see how nasty this area was???

At first we didn't know what to do with this. Then Debbie, Nate's Mom suggested "bead board".

Brilliant! We used a flat bead board to create the ceiling. (we also used it as the backing to the book shelf we made in the living room)

Then we used some paneling like bead board for the walls.

Now all we needed was the trim.

Not the best view.

Here it is with the trim.

Not too bad.

Much better than nasty cracked out wall paper!