Upstairs hallway (mostly) finished!

Our upstairs hallway has been bothering me since we moved in. It had floral blue wallpaper, which would have been tolerable if it hadn't been peeling and falling down all over the place. Like this:

Dont mind my thumb.

Okay, so that second one was obviously after we had already started tearing paper down. But the peeling in the top corner was legit and not staged. I wish I had taken more before pictures, but I didn't really plan the destruction... it just kind of came over me in a blind rage, and I started grabbing loose edges and madly pulling paper down without really thinking about taking pictures for the blog. A year and a half of hating that wallpaper just kind of washed over me and sent me into a frenzy. I think I may have blacked out for a minute. Luckily, most of the paper was put up so crappily that it just peeled off in big sheets. When I came to, I was left with a mess of paper scraps, and some absolutely hideous walls.

  

Even Paul got in on the action

 
 

In case all of the giant cracks in the plaster weren't enough fun, we also had a few big holes (I only got a picture of one, sadly):

Gross.

I have to confess, I had a moment - a moment- where I thought, "Maybe we should just put wallpaper back up." It was a dark moment, but it passed. After that, I grabbed the caulk and the spackling and got to work. I used acrylic latex painter's caulk for the finer cracks and the spaces where the moulding met the wall, and spackling for the bigger cracks and dents. (I like this kind because it comes in a toothpaste tube and goes on pink, which made spackling my walls feel like decorating a cake). For the big holes, I used self-adhesive wall patches that you stick on and spackle over. 

Getting there

In the midst of all this, I made two discoveries about my upstairs hallway. The first one is neat: I found two super old keys above one of the door frames, and they still work in our super old locks.

Cool!

The second discovery is less awesome. Apparently, someone at some point in the history of this house loved wallpaper so much, they decided to put it on the ceiling.

More gross.

The good news is, I went a year and a half in this house before I noticed, so I think I can live with it. For now. Because knowing what shape the walls were in, I'm frankly a little terrified to see what the ceiling looks like under there. The bad news is, it looks really stupid where the ceiling meets the walls. Because it's not even. I think I might eventually put up some simple moulding to mask the uneveness, but for now, it is what it is.

We debated what color to paint the hallway for a good long while, and ultimately landed on a really simple beigey-yellow color. The hallway leads into the stairwell, which leads into the downstairs landing (it will all be painted this color eventually), so we decided we wanted something neutral that would tie the whole house together (the stairwell is currently very, very blue).

Barely Beige, to be precise

And then I painted! Hooray! I still hate the ceiling edges and want to put up moulding, but other than that, I'm excited for my upstairs to finally feel nice!