The landing has been a bit more of a journey than the hall. Firstly it was a lot more pokey than the hall as I think at some point a slice of it has been stolen to make room for our en-suite so the walkway is very narrow. Secondly the landing had no natural light - when we looked around the house the lights didn't work at all so we were stumbling around in the dark; probably intentional so we couldn't see how depressing it was!
The landing was so dark that I didn't even manage to take proper before photo - all we got is this. Edit: I have now found two splendid pictures taken during a viewing
Oddly though, past the tiny dark landing was an entirely pointless room which became known as the anteroom as you had to walk through it to get to one of the kids' bedrooms. This room was nice and bright as it had a big window and no vaulted ceiling. At some point I managed to convince him to bash down the wall between the landing and anteroom to make one big landing with a window, which was much better.
Bizarrely we also found the original banister lurking inside the stud wall, which was temporarily handy.
Deconstructing the landing turned out to be a big horrible job. Once we had taken down the vaulting we could see that the anteroom ceiling was on a different level - because for some reason this had been lowered too. Then for some reason which I have forgotten now we decided to remove the lath and plaster too.
Another thing was the banister. The banister was attached into and supported by the vaulted ceiling. Yeah, I know. The newel post at the top of the stairs extended right up into the ceiling so once the vaulting came down it was no longer stable. The husband has always wanted an oak banister so we coughed up some money and a load of wood arrived which he was very nervous about fitting because he didn't want to cock it up.
I did some excellent assisting and it all went quite smoothly. Here it is in all its glory:
Then there was a verrrrry long wait. The British gypsum factory had shut down due to COVID and then when it reopened everyone went mad hoarding plaster so we couldn't get hold of any for months.
Eventually we managed to get some during a quick spring to Wickes at 8am while we were away visiting friends up north. In came the plaster and tadahhhhhh......
We had a headache about paint colours because we liked the Oval Room Blue hall but we wanted a grey landing and the wall goes all the way up the stairs without an obvious break to change colours. In the end we plumped for a controversial one-blue-one-grey-wall set-up and it seems to work ok.
The final job on this here landing is to decide what to put on it. We can bash ceilings and shovel plaster dust all day long but interior design and furnishing are not skills we possess, which is why none of our rooms ever look quite finished. We think we will do a gallery wall of art eventually and we want a reading nook at the end.
Here's a couple of before and afters:
