Basement Stairway Makeover - Final Touches

I’ve been renovating my basement stairway and it’s looking so good! Over the last couple weeks I ripped up the carpet, installed new stairs, and hung up some wallpaper! This basement stairway makeover has been so gratifying. Now it’s time to add some finishing touches!

Here’s what we started with:

And here’s where we’re at today:

Sliding Door

I ordered a really cool frosted sliding door for David’s jiu jistu room. As you can see, there’s currently no door on there now and this is one of the first things you see when you get to the basement floor.

The only tool we needed to hang this up was our drill!

I love it so much. And this frosted sliding door has a soft close!

Ceiling paint

After sampling some paint colors for the ceiling, I ultimately decided to go with Swiss coffee. This is the same white that I have all over my house! It’s my favorite creamy white and it matches the background wallpaper perfectly. I wanted this hallway to feel very bright bright!

I used my adjustable paint pole for this. Also, I’ll be painting all of the black sliding door trim this same color!

Artwork

I found this antique painting and originally put it in Emery’s room. Eventually it mades it’s way to the decor closet. I decided to hang it on that first landing wall.

Lighting

Next, lighting! I had to remove the light/junction box from the ceiling to see what I was working with. This helped me figure out how I’d wire the new sconces.

Here are the sconces I picked out for this space!

There was a nail holding the box into the stud. It was NOT moving at all. After lots of yanking and hammering and damaging my ceiling. I got it out!

In order to get wiring to the new lights, I need a source of power. So, I’m going to use the original basement light so the switch turns on the sconces too. I had to feel around and find out if I could easily run the wires behind the existing wall.

I found a gap behind the header and studs! So, I didn’t have to make any additional holes. I tried to fish the wiring through the ceiling/wall using a magnetic fishing kit. It just wasn’t working, so I decided to cut a hole right behind where the art will hang.

It would have definitely been smart to do this before wallpaper. However, I didn’t even have the sconces picked out when I started this. But it’s okay to work out of order sometimes!

It WORKED! YAY! (You can tell how re I am 😂)

Next, I patched up the ceiling, got some new junction boxes, and officially installed these sconces!

I made a couple of changes to the bulb right above the first landing. I settled on this reflective bulb so the light will shine up instead of directly on you!