Our Lake House Pictures Before/After Stage 1

We finally finished the stairs and the upstairs at our cottage on the lake. It feels like all we do is projects around here, some quite extensive...so if I have seemed a little less than social lately, it is probably because I am overwhelmed with these projects. The transformation is quite amazing. Here are some before and after pictures. First the stairs: before they were covered in some very old, very ugly carpet. The walls and trim were all a basic white color.

After we pulled the carpet out, the stairs actually looked worse. They were covered in old staples from other carpet installations and several colors of paint and lots and lots of dirt. It was quite a project, but I decided that I wanted them to be painted wood when I was done. The cottage is in the middle of a very rainy very muddy forested area and to eliminate the carpet being destroyed by dirt, we only put it in at the top of the stairs. To restore the stairs, I had to pull out all umpteen zillion staples. Then I had to use wood filler and fill in all the gaps in the stairs and the sides of the stairs. Then I painted the stairs. It ended up being about 6 layers of paint, but we were still using the stairs, so as I did it I had to paint every other one and then hope that everyone paid enough attention to not step on the wet stairs (there were so many footprints I had to paint over). I think they turned out really cute.


(Close up of the dirt after the carpet was removed.)

I think they turned out really cute. Joe also replaced the door to the closet next to the stairs and put up the trim around the doors and on the floor. We also painted all of the walls in the house a tan/green color.


The view from half way up the stairs towards the upstairs.Upstairs was one room with carpet in horrible shape, very dirty with a half wall on one side that served as a divider for a closet area that had a water heater in it. Here is the half wall.

Looking to the right of the stairs. All the walls and ceiling upstairs were painted white.

Looking from the right of the stairs back to the length of the room. The wall on the left is the half wall.

We ripped all the carpet out and the half wall out. Joe took out the water heater and he will reinstall it downstairs (an upcoming project). We started by painting the walls. The walls don't have sheet rock on them, they have some kind of board that is very similar to bead board. It is cute, but it required that we hand paint every groove specially with a paintbrush. The boys loved to help with this.

Joe put a permanent wall in at the top of the stairs immediately to the right. It created two rooms upstairs, a bedroom and a loft room. He put in new molding for all of the baseboards and trim around the new door (which he also installed). We painted everything. Joe and my father moved the lights so that they were in the middle of the new rooms as well as a few switches. I changed every plug and switch. What do you think?

From the top of the stairs immediately looking right toward the new room:

From the back of the loft room toward the stairs and the new room. The room also extends to the right about as far as from the door to Nate.

The new room, to the left of the picture is the new door.

View from the top of the stairs toward the loft room.

The carpet is all from our current house, we upgraded carpet immediately after moving in (well most of it) and saved the old carpet to have it installed here. Now we can spend the night up here, hopefully soon with hot water!