I like the choice of sky blue for hall ceiling.

are they sanding before they paint or just applying on top of the old? are you concerned about lead in the old paint? we are about to start on ours ourselves and wondered what the pros were doing in old nooks like this.

We're just painting over the old stuff with oil-based paint...If you sand you will definitely generate lead dust. THe oil paint is supposed to seal it in safely as far as we understand

Make sure you put some sort of security gate under your hatch (I'm sure you've thought of this).

Our hatch looks identical to this and we have a pretty hefty shackle and padlock on it. Do you still advise a security gate and is that actually legal since I believe the Fire Dept has rules on what can block an egress?

The security gate should have a latch that cannot be opened from outside. On our latch, there is also a hole for a padlock, so the latch cannot be moved, even if they somehow get around the plate covering the it.

It is not wise to padlock your hatch. the best is a slide bolt. If you ever have a fire, this is the first place the fireman go to let out the smoke. If there is a lock they will break open all the skylights or cut through your roof with an axe. My friend has been a fireman in brooklyn for a long time and he always tells me people with locks on their hatch make it very difficult. Just a thought.

You can put a caribener on the interior latch in place of a lock so you can easily remove it without a key in an emergency. Has the same effect as a lock from the perspective of someone trying to break in from the outside.