Wall Colors + Stair Runner Templates (the stuff nightmares are made of)
You know that feeling of excitement when you’re ready to paint a wall? Yeah, I thought I did too, but that feeling of excitement rapidly faded into the murky deep abyss of this stairway below and was replaced with pure exasperation — and a few choice expletives!
After I got done caulking the baseboards (which look fabulous now!), I had to go back and re-spackle the ENTIRE bottom edge of the wall — from the top of the stairs ALL THE WAY DOWN to the bottom of the stairs — because there were some gouges left in the drywall (meaning: I left them behind after I got overzealous with the caulk scraper last week while removing the old, cracked caulk).
Anywho, moving on….
So to derive SOME joy out of this week of tedious tasks, I decided to at least measure out my stripey-muralish wall and slap on as much blue painter’s tape as I could, so that it looks like I actually DID SOMETHING!
You see that magnolia-colored area where the wall meets the baseboard? THAT’s where I had to RE-SPACKLE! 
Here’s a closer view of the stripey wall AND the bottom wall areas I had to go back and spackle 
The transition from my fabulous tropical palm leaf stencil wall to the wide stripey wall
Then we had NIGHTMARE #2: Making stair runner templates
And since I don’t like making things easy for myself, I decided to go ahead and order stair runners for the 1st floor stairway AS WELL AS the stairway leading from the 2nd to the 3rd floor. So, that meant making 3 separate sets of templates! (NOTE: this 2nd stairway would be FAR TOO AMBITIOUS to include as part of the 8-week ORC, but I don’t want to go back next year and find out that the rug maker no longer produces the stairway runner I chose, because that would be MY KINDA LUCK! So, I’ll be completing this section later in the summer, at my leisure, with wine).
Anyway, you may be asking yourself, “Why is she making three separate sets of templates?! Aren’t the angles pretty much the same?”
Well, a logical person would certainly THINK SO! But whoever was responsible for putting in these stairs must’ve missed a few weeks of trig class, because the angles on these stairs were a HOT MESS!
Let’s just say the sum of 3 angles = 180 degrees of pure crap! So, it took me several hours to make each template from scratch, because of varying hypontenuses (hypotenusi? hypotenusen? whatever the plural of that word is). So, this is what I eventually ended up with. They’re all packaged up and sent off to the fabulous Nicola at Stair Runners Direct so she can work her magic.
1st set of stair runner templates … so far, so good 
2nd set of templates (which I thought should be the same size as the 1st set), but that would be TOO EASY!!! 
3rd set of templates … MORE angles of varying sizes!!!
So, that’s my crazy week in a nutshell.
And since crossing things off a list makes EVERYBODY feel better (read: MUCH LESS likely to throw out some choice expletives), here’s what I got accomplished this week in list form:
- Re-spackled the ENTIRE LENGTH of the wall
- Painted the wall Dulux White (it’ll be the base color for the stripey-muralish design)
- Taped off the wall stripes (after rendering, erasing, rendering, erasing, and rendering again)
- Chose my remaining Dulux wall-mural(ish) colors
- Made the (god*%#ned) templates for the stair runners
And the ceiling paint came in this week (in much less time than the original estimated 30-day timeframe, I might add), so I’m definitely WINNING AT LIFE from here on out!
So, I’m all set for the weekend.
Meanwhile, go check out all the One Room Challenge Featured Designers here and Guest Participants (like me) here!