The before photos fail to capture the color nuance. The wainscoting, which appears white, was actually creamy yellow. The tile – oh god the tile – was quite the sight to behold. Normally I’m very  much against painting woodwork, but given the time and budget constraints, we needed an expeditious way to make it a bit more pleasing. In the future (oh glorious future) this too will be stripped.

Hallway before. Crazy tile, less than great color choices.

This hallway provides access to the rental apartment, as well as the cellar (stairs to the right). The door up ahead leads to the street (via under the stoop).

There was nothing wrong with the hallway, just that it wasn’t to our taste.

This shot extra dark and gloomy to illustrate exactly how we felt about this part of the house

Behold the “muppet flesh” pant scheme.

Because this part of the house needed to get done first, we got down to the basics:  replace the floor (not only ugly, but super slippery), and make the area generally more pleasant.

The tile was placed on top of leveling cement, which was placed on top of the original pine sub-floor. It didn’t bode well for poor ol’pine…

This photo creeps me out a little. It always looks worse before it looks better.

We installed bamboo flooring on top of the old sub-floor.

Everything got a coat of paint (to hold us over until that magical day in the distant future when all of this paint gets stripped).

Paint in progress. No more Muppet Flesh. New floor, installing the final bits of quarter round.

Gray on gray. Plain painted steps, no runner.