As I mentioned a while ago when I introduced the foyer before renovations, we wanted to change almost every aspect of the space.
Here’s a fairly wide photo (from the platform on the stairs) of the foyer after we installed the floors & a new door, but before we did anything else. The foyer has the highest ceilings in the house – sloping from 12 ft. 5 in. up to 19 ft. 8 in.
We have a whole wall of windows in the foyer, which lets in a ton of light… but has some flaws.
The seals in most of the windows have been broken allowing for moisture to accumulate between the panes:
The rough-hewn window trim was painted hunter green:
As for the rest of the foyer, the walls were a dingy off-white color & bit scuffed:
The stair railings matched the exterior railings…which were… exterior railings inside…lovely:
Here’s a photo – from the living room looking towards the foyer – that shows the whole foyer a bit better (from when we first bought the house). Here, you can see the chunky railings attached to the sides of the stairs – cutting down on the space in an already narrow “hallway”. Eventually, we would like to replace and move the railings so that they sit on top of the treads.
So, some more immediate things we have done or are doing to update the foyer are:
– demo the tile & replace the foyer subfloor
– expand the door to the kitchen
– install new flooring
– finish the foyer/kitchen doorway
– remove the switches/outlets & baseboard
– paint the walls
– replace switches/outlets with new
…and eventually:
– remove the rest of the stair railings & carpet
– new stair treads
– new star railings
– paint the window trim
– new windows
– replace the light fixture
– replace the fan?
– new baseboard
– new bedroom door
Since I have no where else to post these photos…
here’s a cute diversion for a second: we had a little visitor!
A flying squirrel! Soooo cute! Spencer put on some gloves and was able to scoop this little guy/gal up and let it go out side… where it proceeded to glide over to the nearest tree. Later we found it inside our bird feeder munching away. Adorbs!
Anyway, back to the foyer. Next on the list was painting.
We made sure to cover the floors with rosin paper to protect it from paint drips & ladder feet:
We started with the most difficult part of the job: cutting in against the ceiling:
This was pretty high up there – remember, almost 20 feet. We had to use our exterior extension leader to reach. To give you an idea, the yellow A-frame ladder is 8 ft. tall. To me, when I was at the top of the ladder, the stair platform helped make the height feel not so intimidating. The bottom of the ladder was also pushed against the stairs… so it felt pretty secure. About halfway down the wall, we could then switch to the A-frame ladder. Since it was more stable, A-frame was easier to climb up and down with supplies.
Shortly after this photo I fired Spencer from cutting in when he got a bit of paint on the ceiling. (The super white splotch made the rest of the ceiling look extra dingy and it didn’t wipe off well.)
Oh, and check out what we found behind the drywall under the stairs – a McDonald’s cup circa 1980. The original construction guys threw a bunch of building debris under there. The catch phrase is sort of ironic though.
Back to painting – (hey I had to jazz up a “we painted our walls white post” a little bit didn’t I?) I took over cutting in and then continued with the roller. I believe at some point Spencer finished with the roller while I cut in on the other wall.
We got away with only one coat, but we really should have done two… or used a paint with primer. We used un-tinted ‘Behr Premium Plus, interior eggshell enamel’. My logic was that the wall was already painted an off-white color and I didn’t have any stains that I needed to cover, so why buy paint & primer in one? I will say that this product didn’t seem to go very far on the wall… but it was not the ‘paint & primer in one’ version either. On the other hand, the kitchen was painted with ‘Behr Premium Plus, paint and primer in one’ (deep base, tinted grey) and it did go on better (though I still did two coats). In general, the foyer walls ended up fine, but upon very close inspection, you can see that the paint is pretty thin (and I don’t think it was because we were being stingy with the paint). I have noticed that Behr has stopped selling this product & you can now only buy paint + primer included.
Here, you can see the difference between the off-white and pure white paint color.
The last area to roll was the highest point – where the stairs went up to the guest bedroom level of the house. This area was a bit tricky because I had to basically paint the surface the ladder needed to lean on. The ladder itself was standing on the stairs. The carpet helped keep the ladder stable, but when I was painting this section of the wall, Spencer held the ladder for me. I was able to go over the “ladder shadow” with a roller on a pole.
Our pretty tame painting “mess”: every can of paint we had in the house for some reason, a pile of old switch plates, painting supplies, and I don’t know why… a glue gun.
So here’s the “after” photo I suppose. Not a very big impact… off-white to white. In person, the walls do look brighter and clean. You can kind-of see the difference between the new foyer white and the living room wall in this photo.
At this point we just painted the foyer and stopped at the living room wall. I was debating if I wanted to continue and paint the living room white or the same grey that we used in the kitchen. (I was concerned it would make it seem even darker in there.) Oh, and I refrained from painting the wood frames on the clear story windows & “beam” because I wasn’t sure how to reach the middle section with the ladder – no wall to lean on & the A-frame was way too short.
Overall, this project was a pretty common boring one in some aspects, but a little challenging due to the ceiling height. A great feature of this home are the high ceilings, but those heights make painting interesting!