My Painted Stairs

We all try to leave a mark in this world. And while these photographs of my first floor staircase have nothing to do with funerals or funeral planning, they do say a little about me, so I thought I'd include them here.

I am an enormous admirer of Vanessa Bell's country house, Charleston. She was the writer Virginia Woolf's sister, of course, and she painted the walls and doorways of her home with her lifelong friend Duncan Grant. Gosh, I always thought, I'd like to be that uninhibited, that free. Then, as I approached the age of fifty, I thought, to hell with this, it's now or never. I'm just going to start! So I started. And I painted these stairs that lead upstairs from my narrow 1911 home's first floor.

I stenciled the checkerboard part, and painted the rest freehand with Benjamin Moore sample jars. Are you leaving a mark on your world? Share it with me.