Corners of My Home: Stairway & Hall

Seventeen steep steps, straight up. One wall that extends sixteen or so feet straight up on your left.

A landing and a hall. Just a little setting at the top of the stairs. An old patchwork stool, some old crocks and jugs from our old barns, an old cane seat chair, and a couple of flag pillows. The pillow behind the red one was once an old cotton sweater I paid $1 for that I made into a pillow.

Just a small space at the top of the steps.

The railing was once larger, but we installed a couple closets, as this old farmhouse came only with one small closet downstairs, and one small closet up!

The wall that the star hangs on is one of three up here that my husband built and is now a linen closet, and the wall the the old oil sign (in the top photo) is on is also a nice sized closet. We blended them in with all the new drywall we had to install....they almost look like they belong.

We tucked another closet behind the door in another of the bedrooms. So now, total closets upstairs number four.

When we moved in, there TWO outlets in the upstairs, the rest of the "plugs" were adapters plugged into the light bulb fixtures, and all the lights were pull chains except for the master bedroom! YIKES!

We hired an electrician to come update all the electrical (because it scared us so bad!) and go upstairs and install a modest number of wall outlets and also add light switches to the walls.

Every wall up here was the old, crumbly horsehair plaster and we did each room, one by one, and created major dust storms tearing it all out and hubby replaced each and every wall and ceiling with new sheetrock--one room at a time--even the sixteen foot wall and the ceiling there at the very top of it, which required rigging up a strange ladder extension system to reach it all.

I helped with all of it, so I can tell you that tearing down old plaster and getting rid of it and installing new drywall and all the hard work associated with that is one of the worst things, ever, to do in an old home.

The man is the hardest worker I know and has the patience of a saint, as almost every wall and ceiling in this house has had to be redone. The plaster was dry and and crumbled to the touch, only the old wallpaper was holding it up. The lathework had let go of it long ago.

You can see why my husband sometimes says he hates this old house. It's a love/hate relationship, it was a hard thing to fix all its problems and each time you tackle a new problem, you find an old one you never knew existed! The problems you don't see when you "fall in love" with an old farmhouse.

On this little wall, we have a print given to my husband by a friend: it's a close-up shot of an eagle in flight! Then I hung a barn star in robin's egg blue, and a red, white and blue quilt thrown over the old railing.

This quilt is a favorite of mine and it's made by American Living for JC Penney, a quality piece of work. All their quilts are well done and worth the price.

Have a great day, all!

It's a beautiful one here. Fifteen years ago today, we were bringing home our newborn baby Luke in a snow and ice storm, slipped and slid all the way home, only to find out when we got here that we had buckled him into his car seat, but had forgotten to buckle the seat to the one in the van! Oh my...and we were considered "seasoned" parents with two kids that were twelve and thirteen! Ha!

Today it is going to be sixty degrees, and I'm enjoying it very much!