Bringing Light To Dark Places

The first time I toured the Fixer Upper house was with our home inspector, Mark. You see, my husband, in his desperation to find a house before our time ran out, started doing house tours with the realtor while having me on Face Time. So there we were, a week or so after my husband put the offer on this place, doing the walk through inspection last spring.

I toured the downstairs, counting every wall and light fixture and window treatment that would need fixing, quickly realizing that just about everything in this house would need fixing in some way.

I left my beautiful colonial home in Pennsylvania for this?

By the time we'd made it back to the staircase to go look at the second story, I remember thinking "It's got to get better."

Nope. It got worse. The walls were painted in flat, light sucking paint in a yellowish tan that just made the space feel like a cave. But the walls weren't just dark and ugly. They were dirty and scratched and hadn't been touched in over ten years.

I looked at Mark, the home inspector, and said "Wow. Good thing I know a good painter." And then I pointed to my husband.

Mark nodded and said "Yeah, you aren't kidding!"

Last week, my husband finally figured out a way to paint the tall and cavernous stair well. We continued on with Sherwin Williams Accessible Beige...in a nice, light-welcoming eggshell finish.

When he was done, I ordered stair tread rugs from Improvements catalog. I chose the Diamond Key pattern in Almond, which turned out to be a lovely match to the walls.

The stair tread rugs were an absolute necessity. Our puppy, Jemma, sleeps in her bed in our room every night. When you consider that she's doubled in size in one month, you can imagine how carrying her 25 pounds of wiggling furriness up those stairs every night was becoming dangerous.

She's now learning how to slowly walk up and down the stairs. Each rug is backed in a rubber type of latex, making them grip the stairs. They work really well! And the best part...machine washable.

Can you see how the color and finish now allow the light to bounce off the walls and into this once dark stairwell? With the light, Jemma-colored rugs and light walls, it feels like a spring breeze has blown into this stairway.

I also ordered matching runners for the hallway. I had painted this hallway in January, which was no easy task when you consider the trim I had to do around every door and baseboard!

After finishing a few projects in the kitchen, we can finally turn our attention to painting bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs.

One more job crossed off a very long list.

Bringing light to dark places, and making ugly things pretty again. This is what we do with houses.

I sure hope the next owner appreciates that!