Before/After: Stairs

Oh Stairwell. First, your good qualities. You're open, reasonably. This is a surprisingly difficult thing to come by in Chicago. Many houses have scary narrow steep stairs that are tucked into what you'd think was a closet. So this open stairwell, while sort of hideous, is something of a find in a smaller house.



Now, the bad qualities.

We'll start with the obvious: paneling. Ugh. Then, the railing. I am willing to concede that the railing is not in and of itself universally horrible. We just don't like it; we're into wood and old-timey things, not poorly-executed wrought iron.

That brings us to the wallpaper. Because this wallpaper has (had) a shiny surface to it, it's pretty much impenetrable by water, including that expelled in vapor form by my steamer. So to get it off, I had to peel off the layer of shiny, then soak the paper backing, than peel that off. Which then left a thick coating of 30 year old paste. This involved much scrubbing, sanding, and cursing. I'd say about in equal parts. No, probably more cursing. And then at the end of the scrubbing, we decided that perhaps the best thing to do is to put more wallpaper up. Really? Yes. I can't believe it, either.

And lastly, the carpet. Looking at photos of the before, it is tempting to say that the photo-carpet looks better than the real-life current stairs. Why? Because the photo-carpet is clean and smooth, while the real-life wood is kind of crappy looking. I call this the "things that look shitty in real life often look good in photos" effect.

However.

I was unprepared for what was under the carpet. Clearly, at one point there had been a runner. And, someone had inexplicably painted the trim and floor off-white, up to where it was covered by the runner. And even more inexplicably, a later person made the move from off-white to lime green. Oh yes. That's right, lime green. Trim. I'll wait here until the nausea passes. Better now? Good, because we stripped and painted the hell out of those stairs, and they look much better (photo coming soon...).