she sells seashells

One area I don't have many photos of is the upstairs hallway. This is one of the two areas in the house, the other being the master bedroom, where the wood molding and doors hadn't been painted. If we had the time (and let's face it, the energy!) to strip it all down we would have but our schedule didn't allow for it. Although it's a little awkward to have just this area with dark wood trim and doors, we just couldn't bring ourselves to paint it.

In this photo, the first layer of carpet has already been taken up along with a layer of padding. The rainbow carpet you see here is glued directly down to the hardwood flooring. It's still salvageable but again, in the interest of time and since the stairs were already scheduled to be carpeted we went ahead and carpeted it. Each room has hardwood flooring so it's a bit backwards from what is typically done. If the carpet is removed for one reason or another while we still own the house I'd definitely have the hardwoods refinished rather than recarpeting.

This picture was taken standing outside of Guest Room 1; the doors starting from the left are to the office, guest room 2 and the bathroom.


What you can barely make out in the photos is the seashell print wallpaper. Luckily this was some heavy duty stuff (thanks asbestos!) and came off in large sheets. The thing we definitely didn't have a problem with in this house was wallpaper. It was a shame to see it go though because suddenly the seashell shaped light fixture made no sense and also had to be replaced. The shame.

This photo is from the opposite end of the hallway, taken standing in the office. Starting from the left you see the door to guest room 2, the bathroom, the bump out for the later added heating system and I believe the original chimney (and what you can't see because of it is the door to the master bedroom) and the door to guest room 1 at the end.


This is what the floor looked like after the rainbow carpet was removed. The black glue was scraped up as much as possible before the new carpet was installed. It absolutely reeked. This is the same view as the photo above and you can see the layer of glue left behind that stops at the doorway to the guest room at the end of the hall.


There's a storage closet up here which comes in very handy since the house was likely built without closets in each bedroom and today only two of the four have them. Under the top layer of carpet in here was two layers of very old 'linolem' type flooring that were never glued down and under those, completely unfinished hardwood flooring. The shelves were lined and the floor was carpeted but not much else was done in here.


I'll need to take a good 'after' photo but here's the doorway into the office and guest room 2 after the hardwoods had been finished and carpet installed (pre-vacuuming). The hallway was also painted Ralph Lauren 'canvas natural'.


Unfortunately, due to the excessive layers of carpeting over the years, these doors had been undercut and are now almost two inches short.