torley manor

If you’ll remember waaaay back in January we began a project in our upstairs hallway which involved ripping out the existing carpeting, an excess wall left over from when the back stairway still existed, a doorway arch and the drop ceiling. It all started with our attempt to rid our house of the old carpeting which we suspect is a significant factor in our allergies. We started off slow, only ripping out the carpeting on the stairs in the upstairs hallway, leaving the downstairs and our bedroom untouched. This was a fine plan except that we unearthed some gnarly tiles beneath the hallway carpet. This led to a desire to do something about re-doing the floor, which made us say “well – if we’re going to do that, we should remove this extra wall and this stupid arch”, which led to us saying “well, if we remove that wall and that arch, we are going to have to replace the entire ceiling.” And thus began a much more daunting project than we originally set out to undertake. For the couple original posts on the topic, go here and here.

Here’s some photos of the (nearly) complete project…

The view from the bathroom

The view from the stairs. Compare with the view back in May.

Our Kirkiture lamp

Personalized keystone silkscreen at the top of the steps

A breakdown of what we did in the project…

WALLS — The entire wall from our front entryway, up along the stairs into the upstairs hallway got treated with Glidden “Fresh Lime.” Back when we initially chose the color back in the spring, we questioned whether a whole wall of it would be overload. Emma did the downstairs portion of the wall way back in April and we lived with that for many months before the rest of the wall was ready to be painted. In that time we came to love the green and now that the whole wall is painted we are pretty stoked about how it turned out. Bold, a bit ridiculous, but not overpowering.

Several sections of the upstair walls had to be recreated where the old plaster was torn out as a result of removing the back stairwell. The drop ceiling was ripped out and a new ceiling framed out at the same level (an existing plaster ceiling exists above that.) I tackled most of the drywall installation, then Emma, her dad and her little sister tackled the task of handling all the patching and mudding required to smooth the existing walls into the new walls and all the walls into the new ceiling. A ton of work that would have taken me forever was tackled mostly by Emma’s dad Tom in a few mornings time. The non-lime walls were painted in a stock eggshell white.

FLOOR — When we pulled up the carpet in the hallway we found ugly brown cracked linoleum styled tiles. There were many flooring options that caught our eye but ultimately the hallway didn’t seem like the place we wanted to spent a boatload of cash on this feature. So we decided to just do a stained plywood floor. All it took was four sheets of 1/2″ plywood. We stuck with a citrus theme and found a Minwax “Mandarin Orange” stain that we thought would compliment the green walls (or perhaps clash terribly and drive us insane).

I laid out the pieces of plywood first, cutting them so that they would work around the existing door trim and bannister along the stairway. I then stained them and applied several coats of a water-based polyurethane clear coat before installing them in the hallway. I simply screwed the plywood directly to the existing floor using drywall screws and left the heads exposed. Since the screwheads would be exposed, I did stretch a string across the length of the hallway to ensure a consistent line. Where there were cracks between individual pieces and around trip, I filled them in with some wood putty mixed with the orange stain. Finally I applied several additional layers of the clear coat.

There is some question as to the durability of this flooring option, but I think with some minor upkeep I think it should treat us well.

For an added personal touch, I took an existing keystone silkscreen I had lying around and screened a keystone at the top of the stairs.

CARPET — We debated whether to leave the hallway floor bare or whether to get some carpeting to the run the length of the hallway from our bedroom to the bathroom. After the winter weather started kicking in we realized how nice it was to have carpeting in the hallway (getting up to pee in the middle of the night, even with socks on, the old floor could feel pretty cold.) Many months ago we looked into the cheaper options of FLOR tiles. We had gotten some samples and liked the chartreuse green because we felt it could match the lime wall. As luck would have it we got a notice about a 15% off sale at FLOR and jumped at the chance to get enough tiles to go the length of the hallway. Fedora is the style that we picked. A thin felt-like carpet that is just enough to provide an extra level of walking comfort.

LIGHTING — Previously this hallway had one light only, a pendant fixture that hung above the stairwell. This meant that portions of the hallway were not well lit. We decided to add some lighting to the hallway to improve the situation. The first thing we did was to add three recessed lighting fixtures along the length of the hallway. Our good friend Chris helped us with the wiring for which we are eternally grateful. We also added an electrical socket in the hallway.

The second thing we did was to move and replace the existing pendant fixture over the stairwell. The old fixture was a terrible gold-plated monstrosity. In its place we scored one of the handmade Kirkiture lamps made by local artisan Jason Kirker. He sells these with a plugged cord, but we cut that off and direct wired it. The ceiling plate is from the old light fixture — simply spray painted with a silver spray paint.

DOORWAYS/TRIM — We were able to salvage enough of the original trim to recreate the trim along most of the walls. The walls at either end of the hallway have variations on a theme due to the existing trim not seemingly being commercially available in 2008. The small end wall by the bathroom is just rounded out with some 1/4 round. I don’t even remember why we removed the section of trim down by our bedroom, but it got damaged in the process, so we just replaced that with a piece of 1×10″, at least for the time being.

Most of the trip was painted white, although we left the trim around the doorways the existing dark wood trim. This also “matches” the wood of the stairwell banister and the doors themselves. We are still pondering how to proceed with these. Do we paint them or let them go??? For now they stay as they are.

We still need to do some work on the thresholds in the doorways. I have a plan but need to take some time to make this happen. More info on that when it happens.

***

Well, that’s mostly it. A couple things to do yet. Mostly just need to figure out what to do with the extra space. Might put some bookshelves up there or maybe just some plantlife. Definitely going to fill up the walls with some new artwork. Scored this guy on ebay…

Now on to the next project…