| Before | Door, Sidelights, Paint & Paneling! |
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| The front hall was one of the "selling features" of the house. In fact, Alyssa mentioned on more than one occasion that "the only thing I like about the house is the banister". Anyway, we envisage the slightly sad front hall, with its walls clad in many layers of tasteless wall paper, floor of brown carpet and ceiling covered in cardboard tiles being converted into the grand entrance to our home. | |
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| Amongst its more interesting features, the front hall has a closet under the stairs, with the doorway to it in the living room. A big part of the closet is taken up by a shelf recess. We are planning to change this to a hall closet, with a built in cabinet in the living room in the opening. The lighting is a little odd too - all tacky brass fixtures on old knob and tube wiring. | |
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The front hall joined the front bedroom as a focal point of Colin's demolition work. That pry bar saw good use, shown here removing the last remnants of the carpet strip from the lovely old floorboards we discovered when we ripped the carpet up. A little work and we hope to have a nice new wide plank floor. |
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Colin removed the crumbling plaster walls and nasty tiled ceiling. He installed recessed lighting on a four-way switch (so that you don't have to walk all the way down a dark hall to turn the light on) and replaced all the knob and tube wiring. |
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| The interior walls at the top of the stairs seemed to be made of concrete. Alyssa ripped off as much of the flowery wallpaper as she could, but there was stubborn layer beneath that that wouldn't budge (see above). Thankfully, it was only on a part of the wall. Alyssa used easy sand to cover up the concrete, plaster patches and wallpaper. With a coat of paint and new light fixture, it looks great. | |
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Colin worked his electrical magic and installed recessed lighting. After looking at bare studs and clapboards for several months, we thought it was time to insulate and start dry walling. Andrew came over to help us put up a tricky piece by the door. A few moons later, we hung some of the drywall on the walls. We ripped of the strange trim by the door to reveal the frames for the old sidelights. |
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We could find sidelights that would fit in the rough opening, so Dad
built sidelights. They look great. The light brightens up
the room.
We removed the funny indented shelf space under the stairs and hung new drywall there. Alyssa painted the hall - Concord Ivory (Benjamin Moore). The bold color will be mellowed by the wainscoting. |
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| After we painted, Dad installed the paneling. The most difficult task was to create a new baseboard up the stairs, with every step cut out of a single piece of pine. He installed the remaining baseboards and then nailed up the stiles, bullnose and other trim. Alyssa started to prime the paneling. Dad then ripped up the old carpeting, cleaned the pine floor underneath, and stripped off old paint drips (a very smelly job). | |
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