The stairway certainly was one of those hit you in the face awful things that would have made us turn around and write this house off, if we'd seen it in the beginning of our search. But like I said, we learned to look beyond (thankfully!).The stairway and the hallway were one of our first projects in the house, and boy it felt great to rip all that stuff off the walls. I must stress here how thankful I am to my daughters for being so well behaved and really listening to mommy and daddy when we needed them to stay away from where the work was and let mommy and daddy just work while they played.
As you can see there were TWO chair rails, yes that's two pieces of molding put together to make one big ol' dramatic piece, then the crooked shadow boxes which had to have medallions in the middle, LOVELY! This is where we learned they didn't glue everything, yippee, but they did caulk every thing, booo. And can we just talk about that carpet? oh god. 
The hallway luckily just had shadow boxes, chair rail and ridiculous crown molding that was placed an inch below the ceiling. Not only was it ridiculous it was also making the space look so much shorter. That carpet was commercial carpet, not residential carpet, I swear everything in this house was leftover from construction jobs these guys were on, it just had to be.Once all of the molding was removed the spackling began, oh boy this took a long time. The molding came off pretty rough in some spots and took even the sheet rock paper off, some pretty serious wall repair was in order.
I have to say Oscar and I work together great as a team. We both worked really hard on all of this and did equal things. There was certainly no divide of girl jobs and boy jobs, we did it all together. I'm really proud of us and our relationship for working together so well and rocking Team Santiago!Oh gosh I almost forgot about the hilarious shadowbox within a box on the tall wall of the stairs, oh lord. And it was crooked. Our realtor and the home inspector both independently referred to it as an optical illusion! HA! Just what you want in your house!
The primer in the hallway and the foyer was a thrilling experience, it really meant we were moving forward and saying goodbye to that awfulness. It also really felt like this was our home, we weren't living in the house yet so it was still pretty surreal. Sense my excitement with painting the "classic taupe!" Of course we went to Miami the day after painting this and I couldn't remember the color so well and I kept remembering it with a hint of orange to it and hating it. I was relieved upon our return to see that I really like this color too.
Then it was time for new carpet. Oh gosh, knock me down with a feather it just looked beautiful. I couldn't believe it. I cried. The other carpet was just hideous and we had cut away the sides so we could paint the trim well. It was just a war zone looking mess. But this beautiful lush carpet was all mine and so beautiful...ok I'm getting a little romance novelly with feelings for the carpet...but seriously I LOVE IT! The carpet was the finale of the stairway and hallway because all the painting was finished. We still need to hang some decor but again I'm enjoying just looking at the clean, one color, lovely carpeted look of the whole thing.