When we bought the house there were some things that I love about it, and some I hated. The stairwell, bless it, contained elements of both. I love the sweeping turn of the stairs, the view of the river out the stairwell window and the turret like way the stairs were attached to the back of the house, not taking up room in living area of the house. But I HATED the artexed plasterboard that I knew was covering an old, curved, stone wall. We made a test hole and sure enough… we struck stone!
I knew the stone wall was lurking behind the gaustly, early 80’s artex because our house (before Belgium) was exactly 1 mile up the road from where we are now and had an almost identical stairwell with lovely exposed stone work. In our previous house, the stone had been completely repointed and exposed. Here we exposed the stone, had it roughly repointed, but we are going to limewash the the wall instead of leaving it bare. My hope is we will have a feature that is more in keeping with the period of the house but the limewash will let the wall breathe while brightening the stairwell and making it feel less cold. Once the limewashing is finished we will decide how to dress the stairs.
Today:
