Hallway to completion

This stairwell was full of rubble. Now a little over 4 weeks later this stairwell, plus the downstairs hallway project is 95% complete.
A big part of this was the stairwell and the wall.
It's all insulated, closed up, primed and ready to be painted. Well re-painted.
I painted it with the same paint colour that was there before, but Tresa may decide to paint it the same colour as the hallway.
It depends. So. Hey. Whatever.
It just means that Kieran can paint the wall again. He seems to like painting. It's just that I have to QA his painting.


Mel came over last night to help me drill the holes for the pot lights. I didn't want to the lights to be misaligned. It would just ruin everything. And his laser do-hickey tool is perfect for the job. The lights are spaced 3 ft apart. I only wanted 3 lights but I could not get 3 lights spaced out evenly because of either duct and pipes that were in the joists. So I had to go with 4. I had marked out the vicinity where the lights were going to be. I had even marked where all the joists were, transferred them to the wall but then took them down as we painted the ceiling and. Then I had to find those joists again to ensure I wasn't going to hit a joist and mess up the ceiling.

But it all went in rather easily. I love these pot lights. And they aren't from Home Depot, Rona or Lowes.

Now it's just a matter of the paint colour that Tresa wants to eventually paint that big wall. That's out of my hands.
But my work is almost done. I have to paint the trim and put it all back. But that's relatively easy and can be done any time after we paint that wall. But we can start cleaning everything now. Get rid of all the dust. There's a thin coating of dust everywhere. Especially upstairs. When I opened up the hallway ceiling to install the pot lights. It created a lot of dust. Like someone put out a campfire and the particles rode the air currents everywhere.

We can finally take down the plastic sheet blocking the kitchen and living room from the hallway and clean it up the hallway and stairs. Put our shoes and coats back in the closet.
Hey, I even put a light in the closet. You can switch it off in the closet, but it's tied to the hallway light switch. Since you usually will turn on the hallway lights to get to the closet anyways.

I'm looking forward to everything being done. It's always stressful when a reno is in progress, because everything gets turned inside out and upside down.
The hallway, although it has all of my construction stuff, looks great! It's made the hallway look taller and more airy. It's amazing what pot lights will do to a space. It's not 100% complete, but close enough to clean up and get rid of the dust and reclaim the space again.

I got rid of the light at the top of the stairs and replaced it with the one we originally had downstairs and it's made the upstairs landing area so much brighter.

I know it's not energy efficient. But those areas were kinda dark. And I noticed that 1 CFL was out. Thought those things were supposed to last 5 years. I've never had a CFL last 5 years. Maybe 1 or 2 years at the most.

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