Decorating a hall landing and stairs
I was recently employed to decorate a hall, landing and stairs in a large detached house on the outskirts of the city.
There were many things the customer wanted that was going to make it a very challenging job.
It was approximately 10 years since it had been decorated so it was looking very tired.
My first job was to strip all the old wallpaper off the walls. For this I used an Earlex wallpaper steamer and this took a full day.
I then repaired the walls with polycell readymade plaster.
The next job was to paint all of the ceilings in Dulux White emilulsion in a Matt finish, applying two coats (this required 5lts of paint).
There were some markings on one wall on the stairs which had come though the old wallpaper so I painted the walls again in Dulux white emulsion.
I then painted all the woodwork in Dulux undercoat and quick drying satinwood, but the staircase was slightly different because it is currently wood stained. The customer wanted the bottom part painted white and the posts and bannister rails stained.
I used ronseal undercoat because it covers stained wood in one coat. I then applied Dulux satinwood.
Finally I stained the rest in Sadolin stain in the colour Jacobean walnut.
The amount of satinwood required was 5litres of paint, 1ltr of ronseal undercoat and 1ltr of Sadolin stain.
The final part of the job was to hang the wallpaper. This was to be two wallpapers – one upstairs and one downstairs. This is fairly straight forward as there was no pattern to match.
What puts most people off in a hall, landing and stairs is the stairwell. Here are a couple of tips:
On the stairs measure and hang the longest piece of wallpaper first and then work away from that piece of paper.
To your left and right, if you have somebody to help that is a big bonus in butting the joints if not just take your time.
As you can see the whole area has been lifted. It has a feeling of space and is very light and airy. The wallpaper the customer picked has a fleck of glitter in it and in certain lights it gives a stunning finish.
The staircase now stands out as a feature which is what the customer was trying to achieve.
Wallpaper is definitely becoming more fashionable again and maybe flat painted walls are becoming a thing of the past. What wallpaper offers is character and also warmth.
