Stairwell and Pan Wall

I said if we ever finished any of our on-going projects, I'd share them.
     These still aren't completely finished, but close enough I thought I'd go ahead and post it. For encouragement.

So when we bought this old house, the stairwell looked like something out of an old slum apartment building. Stark, dirty, ugly.
But, there was so much other work needed doing, or projects I wanted to do - at the time, I had no ideas for what to do with this narrow, tall, awkward space other than just paint it, blah - that the stairwell was low on my to-do list.

But then, another a/c repair guy stepped through the ceiling. (Had one go through a bedroom ceiling previously.)
     It already had a damaged spot from an old roof leak, and then a large cra-a-a-ck appeared, and it was apparent the ceiling was going to fall at any time, so the stairwell shot to the top of the do-to list. Well, the ceiling of it anyway.

We built a floor system between the levels to be able to work on the ceiling safely.

We covered the damaged ceiling with new drywall, just screwing it up right over it.

Then we put up old tin we'd taken off an old shed, and bought a barnyard/warehouse pendant light from Home Depot that cost like $30 bucks.

At some point, while remodeling the downstairs, I had removed the old drywall from the lower level, hoping to be able to open the stairwell to the downstairs rooms. Didn't work. Removed a wall joist and the upstairs bedroom door didn't close anymore (the wall sank. Not much, but enough I didn't pull anymore wall joists out.).

So we replaced the drywall on the walls, and then I decided to plank the walls.
      A lot of people (and me, for ease) call it Shiplap, but it's not. Shiplap, laps. 

For planking, I used Underlayment plywood, I believe it's 7/32-inch thick, from Home Depot.
    The fellows there were nice enough to cut the 4x8 sheets into 6-inch (by 8-feet) planks for me with their big saw there at the store (although, some of them like to get in a hurry and force/yank it through and booger up some of the edges, so you might have to politely say, please don't do that).

I went with the underlayment plywood because it was the cheapest option, but the thin thickness of it worked out well for us, as our walls are all wavy and not flat.

 We planked and painted the upper level first, so we could remove the flooring system and continue on down to the first floor.

Added some of the same tin on the lower level ceiling:
     (No light. It sucks sometimes. I bought a battery-operated, motion sensor light, but the cats had the batteries dead in a week.)

 Everyone ended up helping nail up planks and paint before this was over.
   "Oh, you want some dinner, Kev? Here, nail some boards while I go cook."

 Next up: paint steps, and hand rail.

I went with iron pipe - which I spray-painted gloss black - for the handrail.

Here I primed the steps before painting. Half at a time, and every other step, because we still had to be able to use them.

Then I started painting the steps (semi-gloss Onyx black from Walmart).

And the (mostly) finished product:

It probably needs decor on the walls, but I don't know what to put up that won't make the very narrow space look even more closed in, so for now, it is what it is.

Also, I haven't done the floor at the bottom yet.
I plan to get it when I'm doing new flooring in the kitchen (to the right) and dining room (to the left).

The kitchen door, to the right, was the same dried-blood-red as the stairs before.
    I decided to paint it gloss black for something different from all the white at the bottom of the stairs. (Not that it really mattered, since the door mostly stays open anyway.)

I'm also doing this same white plank look in the kitchen, and decided to paint the door black on that side, too, but I also painted the trim black, whereas I left it white on the stairs-side. (No particular reason, just something different.)

My cast iron/stainless steel pots & pans hanging behind the kitchen door.

                   Before                                                      After