At Last, The Banisters

Regular readers may remember that I've mentioned before that in 1965, when I was but a wee bairn, my father had the Victorian banisters boarded in because they were very wide apart and might have been dangerous for my brother, who was then a baby.

Even at the time, I hated this. I always loved the banisters. I had an idea that they had been removed when the boarding was put in and I was very upset about it.

When we bought this house from my parents in 1999, the boarding was still there and there was a glorious 1977 carpet to give added glamour.

It took us a while to get round to doing anything about it, and until last autumn it all looked like this:

Our friend John was round here, refitting the office, and I asked him about the banisters. He poked a screwdriver through the boarding and hit one of the spindles. Hurrah! So we knew that some, at least, were still there.

John came back and removed the boarding, and found that some of the spindles were still there, and some were missing and had been replaced by great chunks of wood: this is at the top of the main flight where there's another small flight.

(Our cat Froggie is a very willing photographic model and tends to feature quite a lot).

John restored the staircase and replaced the missing spindles: here he is in the middle of doing it:

Then Gerald Goodall, the painter and decorator who lives at the top of our road, came and painted it all white - - because we like white and I thought that the combination of the old banisters and the fresh white paint would look good. And oh, yes, it did.

And finally, we chose a new carpet. Dave Cataroche is the brother of one of the actors' girlfriends (!! - the office in the house is an actors' agency for anyone who doesn't know) and he had done a fine job of supplying and fitting the carpet for our refitted office - - so we asked him back to do the carpet. This was a really big job as the carpet covers hall, stairs, landing, downstairs loo and back passage (ooh er).

Dave Cataroche (Homestyle Floorings 0113 2531314) spent a long time working on our uneven floorboards to make the carpet fit better, and finally it was all finished.

We still haven't got round to putting up all the pictures - or getting rid of the phone wires - but here is the result.

And, looking toward the front door:

To me, it has transformed the whole house. I had hated the hall since 1965, and that's a long time. Every time I went through it, or up the stairs, I hated it.

Now I love it. It looks twice as big, and far better proportioned, and light and open. John took the Sixties hardboard off the Victorian doors and they look so much better with their own panels.

It's taken a long time, and a lot of money, but it's been so well worth it. We're really grateful to John, Gerald and Dave who've made it look so good. Hurrah!