The Upstairs Hallway: Wallpapered

Our upstairs hallway has been in limbo for months - half finished with painted wallpaper, half exposed walls of peeling paint and plaster and primed drywall.  It hasn't changed at all since we had the carpet installed over the summer.

At first we were waiting for the extra roll of wallpaper to arrive, then we were just waiting for the right long weekend when my mom could come over and help me hang it (because I have no clue about wallpaper, especially the kind that uses paste).  Life kept getting in the way until President's Day weekend, and my lovely mother sacrificed an entire day off to fix my hallway.

With the high ceilings, the walls required a lot more wallpaper than I had imagined. We used everything I had - 1.5 rolls of the unused paper from the previous owner and 3 floor-to-ceiling sheets I managed to save from the master bedroom renovation.  The new paper went on smoothly and easily, but the previously used and painted sheets were hell.  They were stiff from the paint and stretched to fit other walls.  Some parts had thick pieces of lead paint clinging to the back that refused to peel off and created unsightly lumps.  Some of it needed something stronger than wallpaper paste.  It took forever to get everything up properly.

And once it was all finally up it looked... well, weird.  The unused paper (from the extra rolls) was cream, the salvaged paper was pink and the rest of the paper that was already up was edgecomb gray.  It was a striped mess that desperately needed paint.  I didn't even take pictures of it because it detracted so much from our hard work!  Fast forward to this past weekend and I finally had a chance to paint the hallway and now everything is a nice uniform edgecomb gray.  We barely had enough paint left in the gallon to cover it - I used every last drop so if we have to do a touch-up it's back to the paint store!

All of the work was totally worth it - it looks so much better painted and I really love the subtle textured pattern on the walls.  The look really fits with the 1920's style of the house and gives the hallway extra oomph.  Of course the hall is nowhere near finished.  Sometime in the near future we will wrap it up - all the trim work and doors need to be repainted, the ceiling needs some repair and painting (as illustrated in the photos above), we want to switch out the brass light fixture with a new pendant, and of course add crown molding.