Stairway to Heaven

Enjoying the house tour? Oh good. I’ve got some more eye candy for you today. And by eye candy, I mean these before shots are the equivalent of a dusty Werther’s Original from the bottom of your grandma’s handbag. Shall we?

This is the front stairway. Our house is one of those old houses that has two staircases- one for the back of the house and one for the front. Imagine an estate like Downton Abbey, with back staircases for the help. And then wipe that idea out of your head, because who do you think we are? We just have two staircases. Basically, it’s confusing and maze-like. It doesn’t help that we also have four separate doors/entrances at the front of the house. It’s like Russian Roulette whenever there’s a knock on the door. Any time a contractor comes over, they inevitably get lost. It’s really not that confusing since our house is not that massive, but it’s not exactly intuitive either. I blame the two staircases. Or maybe the four doors.  Anyhoodle, the front staircase goes to the green painted bathroom and the front two bedrooms, which we will be using as guest rooms. So we are taking to calling this the guest wing. Only to be silly. And pretentious. We love being pretentious.

Which naturally, makes this the guest staircase. Or the front stairs. If you’re feeling unpretentious.

That? Is a very old carpet runner. Covered, no, sorry, *layered* really, in cat hair. I don’t need to remind you how I feel about cats.  And oh looky there, I see a hole.

So the carpet runner was on that list of “safety issues” that Kase initially scoffed at. But then he saw the cat hair. I mean, the hole in the carpet.

So I was happy when the carpet installers called me to let me know they could stop by and install the carpet. I was even more ecstatic when I realized  Chris the Painter had gotten to painting the walls! Hallelujah and Amen!  The colors we are using throughout the house are Benjamin Moore “Soft Chamois” and “Ice Formations.” They are much softer than the old paint colors and have more gray in them. Love it.  Soft Chamois is on top and Ice Formations is on the bottom:

And then the carpet installers came with the bound runner. They were weezing and coughing a lot. I can’t imagine why. Don’t suppose they were allergic to cats?  (FYI, we used Mohawk Carpet for both our master and the runner. Basically, it was priced right and I liked the colors and textures offered. We used Lowes for the contracting. Easy peasy. Can’t say much more than that really. I am still clueless when it comes to carpets. Here, the runner is Mohawk Northwich in “Chardonnay.”- I’ll take my wine however I can get it these days.  It’s not nearly as thick as the old runner, so it lays nice and close to the stairs, and the texture should prevent any falls. I can only hope, anyway.)

And now it looks like this:

So much better, right? It’s like one of those lunchtime face lifts they tout on the radio all the time. Instant update. Our front hallway has entered the 21st century. Which is cool, it’s only 200 years old after all.