The stairway is not the most exciting part of the house, but it is important. When you walk in the front door it is smack dab in your face, so it definitely needs some attention.

Unlike the rest of the house, the stair and landing walls have that horrible textured plaster that had a moment of popularity which I will never understand. Not only is it very unpleasing to the eye, but honestly it’s bit dangerous, both Seth and I have shed blood more than once just bumping into a wall. As I would like to not fear going up and down the stairs, we set about removing it.

The first choice would be to take down the walls and put in new dry wall, but that would be a lot of clean up as a number of our walls are slats with horse hair plaster. So the alternative thought was sanding down the wall enough to skim coat. This turned out to be quite slow and demoralizing. After putting in probably about eight hours of work Seth realized the top coat of plaster actually chips off. Surprise! This was way more efficient and we got the whole hall and stairway done over a weekend.

I had to do two coats of skim coating with sanding in between to get a semi smooth finish. I toyed with the idea of doing three, which it definitely could have used, but I decided I was happy leaving a little “character”.

Now it’s just paint, paint and more paint. We’ve primed the walls and are now ready for color! I’m a bit obsessed with grey, it’s a great neutral. Because the stairs lead into the foyer, which leads into the kitchen, which is partially open to the dining room (you get the point), I wanted to make sure I chose a color that would also work in the foyer and work with whatever color we were to choose for the kitchen and downstairs living spaces in the future. Once it’s done it will be a welcomed focal point, not a spikey mess.