The Big Reveal

So. A hundred years or so ago, before The Thing happened, I was consumed by the painting of my back stairway. That's because the back stairway hadn't been painted since, well, at least not since we had moved into the House on the Corner back in 1987, and in the intervening three decades a certain amount of reversion to natural state occurred. (I am just assuming the natural state was dingy, splashed with Diet Pepsi, and that the woodwork was painted black. Also, that the natural state included some places where the plaster had given up the ghost.)

This was in spite of knowing that at least half of our visitors enter the house through this stairway, and were getting a first-hand, close-up look at this:

Yes. They were. And I knew they were. Also, this:

And this: 

The next view has a special quirk. Notice the framed nothingness on the left side of the steps into the kitchen? We wondered what this was until we had a visit from the daughter of the man who built this house in 1927. She was able to explain that there used to be an actual cupboard door that opened into the icebox in the kitchen. The milkman could deliver the milk without having to come all the way into the kitchen. Cool, eh?

Anyway, we were due to have a Special Guest at the house, so I began to scurry and whine. (Those two are inextricably linked in my mind. If I have pressure, I have complaints.) You heard me whining here and here, and I would bet a silk pajama that you thought I didn't finish the painting.

YOU ARE WRONG AND YOU OWE ME A SILK PAJAMA!

I did finish the painting. It took several weeks, uncounted rolls of blue tape, and half a dozen barely-touched sample cans of paint (because, 30 years of evidence to the contrary, I apparently am picky about the way this hallway looks). But I did it!

And now, as Joanna Gaines would say, are you ready to see my new house?

Tah-dah!

I'm going in the order these were shown above, just so you can ooooh and aaaaah in an organized way.

So, the next shot includes what turned out to be my favorite thing about the project. Remember the milk cupboard? And how weird it was to have what appeared to be a boarded up window in the hallway? 

It's now a blackboard! Yes. And although Husband's first reaction was "Who uses a blackboard these days?" even he was impressed when I was able to welcome our Special Guest and all the Boys home for the weekend. (Ignore the cleverly-placed stickers that were added to protect the identities of the special ones.)

So, to sum up. I now love my back stairs. I love the buttery color and the faux carpeting that required all the tape in the world. I love the not-quite-red shade that was such a complete and total pain in the patoot to match. I should have done this at least two decades ago, but I'm glad it's done now, and I am developing painting amnesia about all the little irritations involved in the process.

Because I love it.