When one door closes a hallway leads you through it, or something like that

Alrighty, so moving on to the two places that kill me on a daily basis. The stairways. Laundry is brought up and down these on the regular, that's four sets. Once in the car outside, I always realize I've left something up in the bedroom so there's three sets right there. It's usually my wedding ring... since I still look 15, I prefer to wear it out and about... cuts down on the double-takes. And don't even think about going from the basement up to the attic with out your inhaler. 

Our 1920's plaster walls weren't in the best shape and Zach's dad could only patch so many cracks so Zach came up with the idea to add wainscoting up the stairway. Because we knew it would be painted he just used inexpensive particle board as the bases, since it wouldn't be seen. Sneaky sneaky. Cheapy Cheapy. 

    

While this was going on, my grandparents and I got to work on the back stairway (the house sits higher on our lot so the backdoor leads to the garage and driveway, then down one more set is the basement.) We tore the wallpaper down, Drew vacuumed it up, then put new wallpaper on the top portion and painted chalkboard paint beneath.

I can't believe this was done almost a year ago. Shhh... I was also pregnant with Shepherd then.

When we pulled the (grody) existing carpet up we found this weird rubber tread stuff.  

We thought maybe a pop of color in the stairway would be fun. We were obviously wrong. Or color blind. So yeah, we just went with more grey.

Zach's grandma Darlene and mom Kristi are Michael Jordan's dream team circa 1992 of painters. The bookcase was a natural wood (but different then the floors) that they painted white also.

We replaced this mismatched carpeting also. The wallpaper is really had to photograph but it's a silver grid pattern.

Here you can see the chalkboard in action, I was surprised at how easily it wipes clean. 

And in the spirit of the season, this is what the book case looks like now... all festi-fied. 

I made the yarn wreath while catching up on some Married to Jonas episodes and PBS's Call the Midwife. What can I say, I have an eclectic taste in television. Then I hot glued bugs left-over from Reagan's valentine's last year into that purty frame. I spray painted those paint cans (that my mom gave me) with chalkboard paint a long time ago, then free-handed 'BOO' with some of Reago's orange chalk. Milk glass chicken was my Great-Grandma Shadoan's. Easily, one of my favorite possessions.