Willowcrest Hallway Update

phone camera  is easier to fit inside the house!

Here's a rough draft of my final goal for the hallway.  (This took forever.  I'm hoping the rest of the rooms will go faster since I can SEE what I'm doing!)  

I managed to make the door a little taller, and probably COULD have made it wider if I had tried hard enough. 

I had to repeatedly paint the stairs and new railing in an attempt to match the stained wood.  I think it was because I tried TOO hard, with too small a brush.   I just have to keep reminding myself that this room will be impossible to see once the rest of the walls are back in place.  Luckily the banister does not appear to be that crooked from the angle I normally see it.  There's no way I can straighten it unless I cut it apart from the staircase below, which IS an option.

The orange in the first picture is more accurate.  It will not look so vivid once I add the tans and super-dark browns to the bathroom. 

I took the banister that came with the house and cut it in half to make room for the new stairs.  I also had to cut and paint a new railing since the old one had disappeared.  I traced the banister pattern onto illustration board and cut and painted it.  It pretty much imitates the original staircase below, so I'm happy with how it looks.  What frustrated me the most is that I have no idea what wood stain I used when I originally built the house.  It MAY be Minwax walnut. 

Handmade doorknob, and that's not wood,
it's painted illustration board!

 The doorknob was ultra simple and very effective.  I made it from an earring post, a tiny silver bead cap, and a crystally faceted rondelle bead, and is probably my favorite part of the whole mess.  I have lots more doors to do, luckily these are all parts I already own!

I still need to redo the floor, trim out the door, and run the wiring.  (I ran out of tape wire!)  My pictures don't really capture how it really looks, but it's starting to feel finished.

I'm so unhappy with the walls that I came up with a plan for distracting people from seeing them.  I'm going to fill them with old cabinet photos!  I've collected a variety of them and printed them out on photo paper, just need to arrange them and get them in there.  The theme is adventure and exploration, Victorian style.  I have pictures of famous wanderers and exotic places and people, including Mark Twain and Lady Isabella Bird. 



I am having a terrible time with my white acrylic paint.  All of my other acrylics seem to be just fine, but the white is thick and gloppy and impossible to work with.  What happened to it?  It's the same age and experienced the same environment as all of my other paints.