Upstairs hall nearing completion

I've been working on the upstairs hall for the past few days. It's been rough going. After finishing up hanging all the drywall patches I started scraping the ceiling and walls. the ceiling had a really thick coat of stilping on it. I scraped most of it off and what was left I sanded down smooth. I then skimed the entire ceiling with my mud/sand mix. then I skimed all the rough areas of the walls.



Though you cant tell from the pictures, it has come a long way. today I'm going to sand everything, hopefully I'll be able to primer by tonight. That is when the dramatic transformation should take place.

These next pictures are close-ups of what was once the worst areas:


I still need to build some type of frame for the attic stairs out of trim.



I scraped some of the paint off the top of the stair rail to see what the wood looked like underneath. The grain looks great!



The paint came off surprisingly easy. I'll probably end up using amber shellac on the railing, I haven't decided on the stairs yet. I'd like to use garnet shellac but it would take too long to get the dark color I want and it's not all that durable. Depending on how the wood looks when it's stripped I'll probably use a red mahogany stain and poly.