Willow and Hearth

The reel opens on a narrow landing with three orange wood doors and the first caption in white text: “it’s like the hallway of a million doors.” It comes from @theblackstoneproject, whose post caption reads, “Someone said this hallway looked like a scooby doo chase scene, not anymore!” The narration runs as burned in text across the whole 102 seconds, in the first person.

She goes through the problems one line at a time. The doors are “all orange.” The staircase leading up to the landing “has seen better days.” The wall beside it is flaking, and a hand peels a strip of old wallpaper off in one long piece. “So today this neglected little hallway is getting the transformation that she deserves,” the text says, “starting with a good exfoliation.”

“I removed about 80 years worth of wallpaper and old paint,” she writes. In the footage she works with a hand sander that has a vacuum hose attached, then stands on the stairs scraping the wall, and later wears a dust mask while she reaches up into the corner under the stair. The walls underneath “were looking a little rough,” so she “covered them up with a healthy layer of fresh plaster,” sanded again, and, in her words, “these tired old walls looked brand new.” Green tape protects the wood trim and floor. The stair risers get “a fresh coat of paint.”

The doors are next. The text says “there are six doors in one little landing,” and that she “can fix the issue of six ugly doors by upgrading them with new beautiful doors.” Two people in dust masks lift an old orange door out of its frame, and later a plain white paneled door is fitted into one of the openings. “So while it’s still a lot of doors in one little spot,” the next caption says, “at least it’s a lot of pretty doors.” Then new trim is mounted around a door frame with a drill.

The new trim extends onto the wall. “I thought it would be a great idea to add some trim to the walls,” the video says, “give it a little architectural intrigue.” The cost shows up in the next captions: “figuring out the geometry to make these cuts all almost took me out,” and “I will never do staircase molding again ever.” She stands at a miter saw, then at the stairwell wall with a red nailer, with strips of blue tape marking the layout lines. “But despite the suffering I endured,” the text says, the result is a set of framed panels up the stairwell wall.

Painting was meant to be the easy part. “After the humbling experience of cutting all that trim, I thought I’d move on to a quick paint job, which wasn’t technically difficult but my first color choice was a pretty big fail.” The video then cuts to a hand holding a Barbie doll and the line “It looked exactly like Barbie skin.” She rolled a “slightly less fleshy shade of beige” over the top and writes, “it turned out perfect, I love the new color okay.”

The last additions are practical. “As much as I love these wooden steps, they are a little bit slippery for my kids, so I added these non permanent tread covers.” She also puts a small sign on the bathroom door “to make life easier for any guests.” The comparison shot returns to the orange doors with “remember the spooky old hallway we started with,” and then the finished landing: “and sure it’s still a lot of doors in one little spot, but it’s bright, it’s fresh, and best of all it matches the vibe of the rest of our home.”

One commenter writing in Spanish said the staircase was missing a handrail. The reel itself does not mention a handrail.

The handrail comment has a standard to check against. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s home safety checklist says stairs should have “solidly mounted handrails that run continuously along the full length of the stairs on both sides,” and that light switches should be at both the top and bottom of the stairs. On the treads, it says to use “slip-resistant strips that are securely attached to the steps” or dense, low pile carpeting, and it lists tripping over loose carpets as a common fall scenario. If you add covers like the ones in the video to wooden stairs, check that they stay put when you step on the front edge.

Her order of work is worth copying for a small hallway with many openings: wallpaper and old paint off first, plaster to even out the walls, then the doors and trim, then paint, with the stair treads and small details last. Her paint story adds one more step. Before you cover a whole hallway, roll a test patch of the color on the wall and look at it in the hallway’s own light.