Sore loser? Maybe. But given more than 200 readers took the time to voice their opinion, I have to respect that and go against my instinct to paint the doorstop. Naked boobs are in the hizzouse, and they're staying. For the time being at least. Oh the horror.

We still may experiment a bit, whether it be wrapping the door stop in white tissue paper (thanks to a commenter for that awesome idea) or even Photoshopping it to see how the color change might play out, but sadly I don't see a full blown makeover (and by that I mean a coat of paint) in the near future, I guess that's what I get for allowing us to put the decision in the hands of our readers.

In all honestly, I find the idea of inviting readers to vote on aspects of our home to be a lot of fun. We already welcome you into our home and lives in a virtual way most days of the week, and share the things we work on or plan to work on, so why not involve you all in some of the decision making that goes along with the process?

As novel as it may be, the idea of allowing someone else, or a group of someone elses, to make difficult or even simple decisions at critical points is obviously not a new concept. There are movies, books, websites, and even entire civilizations dedicated to this approach to decision making, but our blog and a relatively consistent daily readership has opened this world for us to implement in our home. Though I may not be particularly thrilled with the outcome of the poll, it's very cool to me that so many people would take the time to register their opinion on something as seemingly mundane as whether or not to paint a doorstop. After all, like any one of the thousands of large or small decisions needed in a home renovation or DIY project, something so small and theoretically unworthy of real debate can easily cause hangups and rethinks.

Perhaps this new mechanism for decision making could have greatly benefited our cause back when we were trying to decide what colors to paint our old bedroom when I took the unfortunate misstep of "ripe wheat." 

Or maybe it could have steered us in a different direction when we opted early on to strip every door casing, window casing, and piece of molding in the house. Knowing what we know now, we would have appreciated a, "NOOOOO!!!! Whatever you do don't strip the paint, it's a form of hell there is no reprieve from!!!!" on that decision). Yep, we could have used some better guidance on that one.

However, this begs the question, what drives your vote? I know it's different for many people, but are you driven to cast your votes in polls like this based on your personal preferences, or do you tend to vote based on what would work best in the owners' home? Or perhaps you tend to vote on the option that requires the least or most effort by the implementer, just to make sure they're putting in the necessary level of effort on a project? 

There are so many things that can drive a decision, but crowd sourcing that decision when we can't seem to agree on one internally may be our new go-to move. I mean, we're obviously far from infallible and don't always know what's best, so why not? But if we do ask for help in decision making, we just need to be ready to commit with the knowledge that sometimes we will need to just go forward with the decision, even if it deviates from the path we'd prefer. Fair is fair, and as I always say, "Don't ask the question if you're don't want to hear the answer."

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Our entryway presents some unique decorating challenges, given that it's only 37" wide from shoe molding to shoe molding. And as much as I love the look of a credenza to throw your keys on when you arrive home, a warm bench to sit on while you take off your shoes, or an umbrella stand tucked neatly in a corner, unfortunately this wasn't an option for us.

The previous owner, a veritable bachelor, who could have benefitted from a designer's loving hand, attempted to furnish the space himself. As you can see from this photo taken during our home inspection, you could hardly walk through the hallway without knocking your knees on the awkwardly placed chairs.

Given our significant restrictions on furniture and accessories, I knew that the walls themselves were going to be the star in this room. In our minds, we quickly ruled out wallpaper for two reasons: 1) we couldn't afford it, and 2) at the time, it seemed like something only people our parents' age were doing. (Boy how decorating has changed in eight years.) That left us with one clear option -- an interesting paint treatment.

My inspiration came to me when reading a decorating magazine. I spotted a picture of a kitchen's dining nook with an interesting harlequin pattern on the walls. This paint treatment (below) immediately clicked as the answer to my design dilemma for many reasons. In addition to adding bold visual interest without impeding into the space, the paint colors themselves, taken from our living room, dining room, and stairwell, offered a way to tie the downstairs together. This approach meant we already had enough paint for this small space, so the only expense was for a few rolls of painters tape.

At first, Alex wasn't quite sure of the idea. I think he said something along the lines of "You want to paint what, where?" We needed an artists rendering to help him to understand my vision.

I have an artist's sketch book that has served us for years. Both Alex and I have used this book to jot down ideas, paste inspirational clippings, sketch out plans, and even to calculate room budgets. This helps me to not only think the idea through, but in many cases, it also helps me to get my sometimes skeptical dear husband on board with my crazy ideas. Below is my original concept rendering of the space that I made to help Alex "see" what I saw.

Once all parties were on board (the second participant was just a little late to the train), we were fully committed to the idea, so we laid out a game plan. The walls had already been prepped and skimmed with a fresh coat of plaster to act as ournew smooth canvas, so we were ready to roll.

We had never painted anything like this, so our approach had to be simple but methodical to eliminate room for error. Once it was time to paint, we had come up with a good plan and our steps were simple and fairly easy to execute.

1. Paint the base coat color (lighter diamonds).
2. Calculate height, width, and intersection point of each diamond.
3. Create a template/jig and mark each intersection point.
4. Tape the boundaries of every other diamond based on the small intersection points.
5. Paint first set of diamonds with two coats of paint (more if required).
6. Carefully remove tape and let paint fully dry.
7. Using already painted diamond borders as a guide, tape the diamonds that are left to paint.
8. Paint second set of diamonds with two coats of paint.
9. Carefully remove tape.
10. Touch-ups
11. Paint dots at the intersection of each diamond to mask the pencil marks.
12. Enjoy harlequin pattern and a job well done.

1. Paint the base coat color (lighter diamonds).

First, I painted the four walls in the lighter color, Glidden's Toasty Gray, in a flat finish. We paid special attention to ensure full coverage and a good and smooth finish. This base coat will eventually make up all of the lighter color diamonds, so you want to be careful not to mark this area during any of the next steps. If you are following this for your project, make sure you have full coverage. Touch-ups of the light paint once you move past this step can be very difficult.

2. Calculate height, width, and intersection point of each diamond.

This is the most important step in the process, and the one that actually took the most time for us. If you successfully measure and calculate the precise height and width of the diamonds to fit perfectly on your wall, you won't be left trying to fudge or figure out placement while in the painting phase.

Using Alex's mad math skills (while working on this task he reminded me many times that he once got an A in geometry in eighth grade), he worked to determine the exact height and width of the diamonds. 

Here's a pretty big admission coming your way: I'm super type A, as anal as they come. And my directive to Alex was that all diamonds had to fit within the wall space offered. I didn't want cut off diamonds at the ceiling or floor level, nor at any of the corners. After a few choice words back and forth, Alex set off to work on calculating my masterpiece. 

Alex's Technical Notes:

Wendy and I discussed the ideal height and width of diamonds for the space basing it purely on aesthetics and not actual wall measurements. We determined that a diamond's height should be roughly two times its width. At this point, we were worrying more about what size would look best in the space than the specific end result size. 

Once we figured out the ideal height and width, we then determined the rough number of full diamonds we could fit in the space. We figured out the target number of diamonds across the base of the walls, and the number of diamonds tall the pattern should be. With those numbers in place, I laid out a scale drawing to begin calculations.

Given the actual width of the wall, and the number of diamonds we wanted to appear, I divided the total width of the wall by the number of diamonds to determine the actual width of each diamond. I repeated the process with the height of the wall and the number of diamonds "tall" the layout would be, this determined the height of each one. After reminding myself how to do a little fraction long division, it really wasn't too hard to determine the ideal width and height of each diamond. But then again, I did get an A in eighth grade geometry. Are you impressed?

Thanks, Alex, we're all quite proud of your geometry accomplishments...

This is one of the instances where our skill sets complement each other. I get to be the creative mind behind the project as well as the official painter, whereas Alex's analytical engineering brain can figure out the mechanics behind it all.

As Alex crunched numbers, we realized that we could pretty easily have a nice, neat sizing scheme for the diamonds on the long wall. It was the other three walls, complete with varying sized doorways, that presented a challenge. Our secret though was to slightly alter the size of the diamonds on the other three walls, so that at quick glance they appear to be the same size, but making slight adjustments allowed for the symmetry I was after. Yep, we're sneaky like that.

3. Create a template/jig and mark each intersection point.

We had established the height and width of each diamond on the wall, so we were off to the races. Alex used a 10' long piece of 1"x4" and marked the calculated widths and heights of the diamonds on either side of the wood. This 1"x4" acted as a measuring guide that would allow us to mark the precise intersection points of each diamond on the wall. 

A day or so after the two coats of base paint had dried, we began marking the intersection points. We held the wood against the wall with a level to ensure a consistent and plumb measurement, and marked the calculated points. Our goal was to mark every single intersection point of the diamonds on the wall before we painted the first diamond, then we could use those pencil marks as a guide for laying out the painter's tape. 

4. Tape the boundaries of every other diamond based on the small intersection points.

Using the marks from the previous steps, we began taping off the outer borders of the areas that would become the darker diamonds. And, just to be safe, I also placed a small piece of tape in the diamond areas that were supposed to be left as is. The process was tedious and time consuming, I'm not going to lie, but it was far easier since we had the small intersection pencil marks to act as our guide. We were well on our way, and I was well on my way to delirium, as seen from the Vanna White-esque photo below.

Once the taping was complete, we were careful to run our painter's rag covered fingers over the edges of all the tape to ensure the paint wouldn't bleed under the tape. It also helped that we had a very smooth wall from the recent re-plastering that Alex has completed.

5. Paint first set of diamonds with two coats of paint (more if required).

I began rolling on the darker paint, Behr's Brushwood, in a satin finish. This step was smooth sailing, and took little time at all thanks to our diligent prep work. 

From the photo above, you can see what I mean by painting only every other diamond on the first go. It's important to note why we taped and painted every other diamond for the first coat. Since the diamonds each intersected with each other, it would have been nearly impossible to adhere the tape in a way that would allow for the intersection of the diamonds and painting in one fell swoop. if we had tried to tape and paint the darker color all at once, we would have had to make a lot of very detailed cuts on the painter's tape to ensure crisp intersected corners. Using this every other approach meant that the tape never ran into another diamond with wet paint.

6. Carefully remove tape and let paint fully dry.

Before the final coat has dried, remove the tape by starting at the end and pulling at a sharp angle away from the diamond. Doing this while the paint is wet will help to prevent you from pulling the paint off with the tape. Remove all of the first set of diamond's paint from the wall and then wait a day or two for the paint to fully dry. The next step will place tape directly on the new paint, and the last thing you want to do it pull the new paint off of the wall.

7. Using already painted diamond borders as a guide, tape the diamonds that are left to paint.

Once the first set of darker diamonds had set up for a day, we began taping the borders of the second set. From the photo below, you can see that Alex was able to use the lines from the first set of diamonds to simply connect one diamond to the next.

You can use the painted diamonds as a guide that ensures symmetry between all diamonds on the wall. For this step, having two people work together worked very well.

We were nervous that our tape might pull off the paint on the first set of diamonds, so Alex worked to tape off all of the diamonds, while I followed behind him painting the masked off areas. Once I was done painting a small area, Alex would circle back and carefully remove the paint.

8. Paint second set of diamonds with two coats of paint.

It was so each to use the conveniently placed tape lines to quickly and easily apply the couple coats of paint that was needed. Here I am in the midst of painting the first few second coat diamonds. 

9. Carefully remove tape.

Careful removal is important here given the somewhat fragile paint from the first set of diamonds. You can see on the photo above that Alex left the tape slightly peeled up at the edges. This allowed him to easily grasp the edge of the tape for removal without scratching the new paint.

10. Touch-ups

For the harder to reach spots, I used an artist's brush to apply the paint. This let me get right into the corners that were quite hard to reach.

11. Paint dots at the intersection of each diamond to mask the pencil marks.

And this brings us to the final step of the paint treatment: the colored polka dots that overlap the intersection of the diamonds. I still chuckle when I think about the conversation Alex and I had about this, and how differently our minds work. Even though he could figure out all of the math involved in the project, he was totally stumped on how we would paint on the little dots. He was throwing out ideas of custom stencils and other complicated processes, when I looked at him with an "are you stupid glare" and said, "This is a no brainer. We're going to dip a no. 2 pencil eraser in the paint and stamp it on."  I mean, duh! 

Seriously though, it's just another reason why we make a great team. There are so many projects that if working alone, one of us would surely throw in the towel. It's the support from one another and different problem solving methods that help us along the way in our DIY adventures. (Though I may need someone to remind me of this when we start back up on our master bathroom reno.)

12. Enjoy harlequin pattern and a job well done.

After the paint was complete and my little red dots were dry, we put down a rug won from eBay, hung a mirror and added salvaged wooden corbels as candle holders to round out the look. 

Our downstairs hallway has come a long way from the boring and dingy space that it once was. It took months of hard work to get to the point where we were ready to add a snazzy paint treatment, but the effort was well worth it. 

If I had it to do over again, would I? Absolutely, but today I might try out a fun Moroccan look or a more modern, graphic pattern. But most importantly, I would never use flat paint again in such a high traffic area. It tends to scuff, and the touch ups we've made don't blend in with the original paint.

Love 'em or hate 'em, these babies make a bold statement when you enter our home. Many people actually mistake them for wallpaper because the lines are so crisp. They're a fun conversation piece and one of the lasting impressions from our home. Years after visiting our house, people often ask us "Are the diamonds still on the wall in your hallway?" They say diamonds are a girl's best friend. I couldn't agree more.

Have you tried any interesting paint treatments in your home? Or done something to make your entryway memorable? We'd love to hear about it.

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With the work we had completed, including the new leaded glass transom, harlequin paint pattern on the wall, and antique corbels, the entry hall had really taken shape. 

By the time the photo above was taken, we had already stripped and painted/refinished the stairs and re-plastered the stairwell walls, but the handrail situation really left something to be desired. From an earlier photo you can see the handrail we had when we moved in.

Besides being unsightly, it was dangerous. I nearly fell down the stairs several times when my shorts' leg would catch the top of the handrail as I rounded the newel post. We knew we wanted to replace it, but with what we didn't know. The space it quite tight, so something large really wouldn't work. Since there are two simple and plain walls, rather than an open handrail, we felt like something a bit more decorative might work well.

We really were a bit lost with what we wanted to do, and I was striking out with my ideas. I purchased some salvaged handrail brackets, but those wouldn't offer enough embellishment. I bought a handrail to match the handrail upstairs. When I brought it home Wendy just looked at me and shook her head. I ended up returning it. She was right, looking back on it, my purchase was way too large and I don't know what I was thinking. (Although in the moment I didn't concede quite that easily.)

I always really liked the raised panel wainscoting we would often see on home tours, but I just didn't know how to work it into our project. It wasn't until we went to dinner at a local restaurant that our solution presented itself through a bit of inspiration. 

The restaurant, currently Columbia Firehouse, is located in an old firehouse building. It is a large building with a lot of dark and intricate woodwork, fitting for an Old Town bar and eatery. The restaurant has multiple floors with handsome wood paneled walls next to stairs. One stair in particular has the handrail worked right into the paneling. When I saw this solution I realized that this was our solution and what we needed to pursue, just on a smaller and less "masculine dark wood" scale. Here is a quick but sort of bad cell phone camera photo of our inspiration. I took it while trying not to look too conspicuous on the way to the restroom :-)

**Updated with a slightly better photo

We decided to do a painted raised panel wainscoting with an integrated handrail to cap it off. This would accomplish the slightly more decorative approach we were looking for, and would allow us to use a less intrusive handrail that we could move to the right side of the stairs. I could see it in my head, but the plan was a bit complex, and was like nothing I had ever tried before. So we had to do a ton of planning and calculations before starting. 

There were basically two aspects to the plan, the raised panel component and the handrail component, so I broke the project into two smaller projects.

Raised Panel Wainscoting

I had seen raised panel wainscoting along stairs in many homes and the restaurant I mentioned above, and I liked the look. I had never installed wainscoting, nor cut raised panels, so doing a rail and stile raised panel wainscoting as my first project was a bit ambitious, but worth a shot.

Since we were going to be painting the whole thing, I decided I would do the rails and stiles using poplar, but would cut the panels from MDF. Since the MDF is more stable, we wouldn't end up with paint issues from expansion/contraction through the seasons due to heat and humidity.

With the materials chosen, I started measuring and planning. Here is the original sketch of our plan with all of the measurements, calculations, and estimations. Having never installed wainscoting, I was flying by the seat of my pants.

I had to account for how many stairs there were, how many panels we wanted, how many panels per stair, how the panels would look above each stair, with width of the stiles, the angle of the stairs, the length of the stairs, where the landing was, what height the handrail would need to be once you reach the landing, how many panels and their sizes once on the landing, and on and on. It was almost overwhelming, but the plan above was my guide throughout. If you look closely, you can even see my long division.

Once the plan was set, the first thing I did was order a rail and stile router bit set. We wanted the panels to look as much like the original doors in our house as we could, and this bit set matched the edge detail of the rails and stiles on the doors.

After we had the bits, I focused on the construction of the panels. The doors we have are not the same as typical raised panel doors. Most doors have a slight angle towards the panels, then a small bevel before reaching the panel. However, our door panels are flat until you reach the bevel at the panel. The panel then comes after a very small but sharp bevel, not the gradual one you typically see on most doors. I've searched high and low and can't find the panel raising router bit to match this profile, so I had to improvise. Here is a photo of the door details that we were trying to match.

To accomplish this, I setup the router to make multiple cuts on each panel. First, I would remove all of the material using a standard flat cutting bit. This would give us the panels as a simple raised box. Then I used the V groove router bit to delicately cut the beveled edge. It took a LOT of measuring, but it came out looking the way I wanted it to.

Once we had all of the panels cut, and all of the rails and stiles routed, I nailed the bottom rail to the wall based on the angle I determined, and started laying out the whole setup to get a rough sense if everything was going as planned.

We were happy with the way the panels came together, so we were all set to move ahead. One tip I learned was to pre-prime the panels before install. This way, if they moved just a bit, you wouldn't end up seeing unpainted wood through any cracks in the paint.

Note: There is one thing I didn't do here that I should have. When you cut MDF with a router it leaves a little bit of "fuzz" in the cut area. You can't really sand it out, and when you paint that fuz, it gives a bit of a bumpy appearance. After this project I learned of a trick to take care of this. Mix one part regular wood glue with one part water and, using a small brush, paint the cut areas with a coat of the mixture. Allow the coat to dry and lightly sand with a fine sandpaper or steel wool. Repeat this process three times. This will give you a nice a consistent surface similar to the finished area of the MDF. I've done this on a few projects since then and it works really well.

After the panels were all primed, we proceeded with the install. Since everything had been dry fitted and numbered, the actual install went really quickly. I only glued the rails to the stiles, no glue on the panels, as they need to stay floating to allow for small amounts of movement.

A few hours later and we had what appeared to be a decorative wainscoting. It was looking really good. 

I really didn't want to remove the original plaster and lath, both for historical integrity and for the insulation and sound attenuating characteristics it offered, and I didn't want to try to remove the baseboard fearing it would either break or bring much of the plaster with it. This meant that the baseboard was set back slightly to the wainscoting, so I bridged the gap with a piece of molding that had a slight step back to it.

Now that the wainscoting was done, I turned my attention to the handrail detail.

Handrail

As I mentioned, we had planed on integrating the handrail into the wainscoting design. We could have mounted a handrail to the front of the wainscoting, but we felt that would intrude too much on the already narrow staircase. Using the inspiration from the restaurant, we found a somewhat small stock handrail at our local Lowes. The stock only came in 10' lengths, so we would need to join a few pieces together to make it work.

My plan was to create a small ledge that the handrail would mount to. That ledge would then sit flush on the top of the wainscoting, and then a molding would bridge any gap left between the molding and the wainscoting, making it look like one piece. I would also route an ogee on the ledge under the rail to give less of an abrupt transition between the pieces. Here is one of the extra pieces we had after cutting. It gives you a good idea of the ledge with handrail joined to it. 

We then screwed the handrail to the ledge every two feet. The screw was slightly countersunk, hole filled with epoxy filler, and sanded smooth. Since the handrail needed to be made of several lengths, I was able to stagger the ledge and handrail pieces to create one solid, 26' handrail length. The handrail was much longer than the house is wide, so when I brought it up from the basement, in order to turn it around we had to take it out the front door, spin, and bring it back inside. (Wendy and I received some strange looks from passer bys when doing this. I guess it's not every day you see people bring their handrail outdoors.)

When everything was glued, screwed and pointing the right direction, we simply screwed the flat portion of the handrail ledge to the wall above the wainscoting. We used long 4" decking screws to secure the entire handrail into studs in the wall. This handrail wouldn't be going anywhere if someone grabbed it to steady themselves. 

We finished the landing portion of the stairs with the same handrail just for consistency. 

Our new handrail and wainscoting were installed and just needed the final few coats of paint.

For my first shot at doing several items on this project, and wrapping them all into one project, I'd say we did a really good job. I wish I had known the trick to knock down the MDF fuzziness, but it doesn't look too bad. We had a contractor come over the house to give us an estimate for something, and I was just generally talking with him about projects we had. When I showed him this wainscoting, he seemed very surprised it wasn't a kit of some sort and that I had cut everything on my own.

There was one particularly tricky spot on this project, it was the panel that happened to land on the transition from the stairs to the landing. 

As you can see from the photo, I had to get creative with my measuring and cutting. We didn't have much of an option. If the panels were larger so this wouldn't happen, they wouldn't look right on the stairs, smaller and they would look too thin. So I ended up making it work given what we had to work with. This photo also gives a good view of the stepped molding we used between the wainscoting and the baseboard. 

Here's another shot looking down from the top.

Almost without fail, when people first come to our house, they often ask us about the wainscoting and handrail. It has become one of the focal points of the entryway when you are a few steps into the house. In our opinion, it looks like it has always been there, and provided an aesthetically pleasing solution to improving the safety of our staircase. No longer do I worry that our handrail will get caught in my shorts' pocket, and cause a nasty spill down the stairs.

There's one very important lesson that we've learned over the years though: hold onto the handrail when going down the stairs! The stairs themselves are a little slippery, and we try not to go up and down them in stocking feet. If only Wendy had been holding our beautiful new handrail one summer day in 2008, she wouldn't have ended up with this attractive bruise just north of her backside.

Have you completed a home improvement project in the name of safety that also serves as a design feature in your home? And don't worry about Wendy. Luckily she walked away from the incident with only bumps and bruises...to her backside (and her ego). Lesson learned. 

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It makes me a little sad that we can't give you real time details of our first projects that we've already completed. Honestly, that is our loss but absolutely your gain, as our projects take FOREVER and now we can recap the interesting bits in a much more efficient manner. Don't worry though, we'll have plenty of other agonizingly long projects to recap. Come to think of it, we're in the middle of two or three as I type this.

The process of blogging about some of our early years' projects is also allowing us to relive some of our fond memories, which is a ton of fun. For instance, last night I said to Wendy, "Can you believe we lived with parchment paper on the stairs and a yellow extension cord running down the stairs for a year?" To which she responded, "I think I hate you." Love is in the air!

Yesterday's post covered our enthusiastic and almost giddy rush into the first several days of homeownership. We were excited and ready to take the world by storm renovating houses. We had three full weeks overlap living in our apartment while also working on our empty house. Our plan was to get as much done as we could, move in, fix it up, enjoy it, and move on. Like most first time DIY homeowners with a wreck of a house, we had absolutely no idea what we were getting ourselves into.

For one, we had made a commitment to strip all of the molding and doors in the house, thinking that would be an easy task. Given the seemingly endless layers of old paint from the last 100+ years, combined with the intricate details of the molding profile, well, it turned out to be a tall task that we are still working on 8+ years later. The picture below shows the profile of the mid-sized molding throughout our house. See the rounded portions and grooves all over the place. Paint just loves to goop and hide there.

Due to the paint stripping, the cracked walls, the need to re-plaster, the pull chain light, other projects, life, and the fact that we tackle many projects at once in spite of our understanding that we really shouldn't, the work on the entry hallway and stairs started in January 2003 and didn't wrap up until January 2005. That's a full 2 years for those of you scoring at home. Technically, if you count the fact that the entry vestibule isn't done, and I have a few items I'd still like to change on the hall, this project has actually taken longer to complete than our blog took to launch.

Once we had the carpet off of the stairs, and the stair treads refinished, we eventually shifted our focus back to the task at hand, and it was time for me to start stripping all of the molding I was talking about. And there sure was a lot of it.

Please note the pull string light, caked up paint job on the inoperable transom window, and the huge amount of work ahead. At least the transom glass was original and wavy. (Something I've yet to share: I heart wavy glass.)

This was our view up the stairs after the baseboards were stripped. You can see the paper on the stairs that I mentioned earlier. Yeah, I think it was actually on there for a full year. Also note the odd lack of molding around the doorway into the dining room. Something about this wide open space, giant doorway, and lack of molding was just plain wrong and boring...so we decided to fix it.

To correct this issue we turned to something that will undoubtedly become a theme on this blog, eBay.com. We found a wonderful leaded wavy glass window for about $30 (+5$ shipping). As you can see from the photo, it was in rough shape. The leading had been painted black at some point, someone had put silicon caulk around the perimeter of the glass for some reason, and the sash was falling apart.

I took it all apart, spent many hours cleaning it up with a razor and steel wool, and the end result was decent and fits nicely with our old house. That is one thing we learned right off the bat, if your work is close to perfect in an old house, it looks out of place. We really don't have a straight line or 90 degree angle in the house, so why start now?

Next up, we made a new piece of jamb to match the thickness and dimension of the old one (I've gotten a lot better at this now).

We then framed up a bit of an actual wall, and the opening for the soon to be installed transom window. This is one of those times where doing it "right" looked wrong. When I installed the transom ledge perfectly level, the leaning stairs made it look horrible. I actually had to lower the left side of the ledge to take it out of level and therefore make it look like it had always been there. Isn't that what they call character?

Here is the test fit of the transom in it's place. The main reason I used this photo was to highlight the infamous extension cord that we all grew to love. You can also see that I installed a door jamb in the doorway to the dining room so that we could put in a door casing so it wouldn't look so out of place.

After this, we focused on fixing all of the cracks and "re-plastering" the walls. I'll get much more into the plastering techniques we've adopted over the years in future posts. It has gone through several iterations, but this was our first attempt at it. Let's just say that there has been a lot of mud, dust, sanding, and swearing along the way.

We opted for a somewhat substantial crown molding for the hallway, and a matching but slightly smaller profile for the upstairs hall. The first floor ceilings are 10', so a heftier crown just looked more at home. Also in this photo, you can see the hinges we used for the transom. To this day, the side hinged transom frustrates me. This was back when we were noobs, and we were following the lead of another transom in the house with incorrectly placed hinges. At some point, I'll change this.

We searched and searched for a light fixture for this hall, and I had it in my head that we HAD to have a glass bell hundi lantern. I wanted an antique one so badly, but they are quite expensive, and were way out of our price range. This was also well before they were popular in mail order catalogs, so we just kept our eyes open. We spent our first anniversary in St. Michaels, Maryland, and Wendy spotted an etched glass hanging bell candle holder in a store window. It was not a lamp and wasn't electrified, but she looked at me with her knowing glance and said, "Can you make that into a light for us?" I cannibalized the old, hideous, brass lamp from the hall, added a little spray paint and some new wires. The end result, for under $200, is what you see below.

The light is honestly one of my favorite things in the house, and something we will absolutely be taking with us if we ever move. We also added a small plaster veneer ceiling medallion for good measure.

With the light hung, molding stripped, and the walls crack free and smooth as can be, we turned our attention to painting the hall. With the diamond shaped etched glass hanging lamp casting little diamond shadows on the wall, and the diamond like shapes in the new transom, Wendy thought it appropriate to do a two-tone diamond harlequin pattern. She felt it would give the entry that wow factor right when you walked into the house. Here Wendy is working on completing the pattern. We'll cover exactly how you can achieve something similar in a future post.

With the light hung, transom installed, new door casing, and walls painted, the hall was taking shape. The photo below gives you a decent side by side before and after. The dates listed are 100% accurate (before photo is of the previous owner's lovely decor) and are part of the reason why my wife has a perfectly reasonable excuse to loathe me long projects. Our end result is my chance at redemption.

We still had a ways to go until the new handrail on the stairs completed the project, but I'll cover that one in my next post.

So there you have it. My long winded detailed summary of a project that we started on day one. It may have taken way longer than expected, but I hope you'll agree that the end results were worth the blood, sweat and tears.

Now that I've come clean with our (first) never ending project, why don't you share some of your stories? Who has a partner than easily exceeds their time estimates by 10x, or constantly says it'll be done in 2 more weeks?

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Ick. Make that a double ick. From the "too tight of a squeeze" opening into the house, to the nasty pull chain light, all the way down to the filthy carpet on the stairs, our home was a creepy old man sporting a pocket protector and a bad toupee. And something needed to be done about it, pronto.

No sooner had we finalized the paperwork making it officially ours, we arrived at our new home, ready to make a dent in the ugliness that enveloped the property. We actually settled about two blocks from our house and had parked our car just outside our new front door, full of tools and ready to go. 

The toupee, a.k.a. bad rug, was first up on our list. Armed with a hammer and prybar (details on these tools can be found in this blog post), we quickly got to work ripping, pulling, and tearing up the rug and tack strips below. Despite the rough state, we knew we had a diamond in the rough, just waiting to be polished up. 

After applying the paste, the next step is to cover the paste with laminated paper (included), that is left on until the paint beneath it dissolves. If you run out of the paper, you can also use a standard roll of wax paper. The laminated paper is then removed with the bulk of the paste and paint adhering to it, and the stripped surface is washed clean.

• Strip baseboards.
• Priming and painting the newly stripped risers.
• Replaster stairwell walls.
• Coming up with an alternative for the existing handrail. Although semi-functional, our handrail just wasn't working for us. For one, it was installed in such a way that it was imposing in the already narrow space and often caught pant legs on the way down the stairs. Secondly, well, it was ugly.
• Adding visual interest to the stairwell via a salvaged leaded glass window.
• Renovating the downstairs hallway, to include stripping and repainting the orginal molding, replastering the walls and ceiling, adding crown molding, and the completion of a hand-done harlequin paint treatment.

We'll summarize it all in subsequent posts, as well as additional details on how you can accomplish similar projects in your own home. Do you think our first few hours and days of homeownership were spent wisely? Perhaps there's something you've done to improve the entryway of your home? Please share your tips and projects. We'd love to hear them.

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