Project: Stairway to...

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I was going to title this post "Project: Stairway to Heaven Our Bedroom" but then I decided that was maybe a little weird.

ANYWAY - As I've mentioned before, one of the first projects that we took on after we bought this house was ripping out all of the carpet and redoing the floors.  Most of the time we were giddy with excitement at how beautiful the floors were underneath the carpet... until we got to the stairs.  As you can see below, the stair reveal was a major disappointment.

As if tacks and nails weren't enough to hold down the carpet... (all of that white is old glue).

Up close you could almost envision how the stairs evolved over time though the 65 or so years that the previous owners lived here.  I assume they started out as just wooden attic stairs prior to the attic being converted to living space (which is what the son had told me his dad did when he was a kid).  At that point it would seem that they painted the stairs a greenish (very 40s/50s) color, and then later painted them a weird, poopy brown and ran a carpet runner up there.  The installation of that carpet runner is what made the stairs virtually un-refinishable.  Not only had they used an awful glue to hold the carpet in place that was now just lumpy and crusty, but they had also used the metal strips along each tread edge and secured them with some honking nails - leaving me some pretty large holes to fill!

So, in short, my dreams of a natural wood-stained staircase were gone about as soon as we tore up the first piece of carpet.  And since I didn't really have a back up plan at the time (I think we pulled the carpet back in May?), they've just sat there. Staring at me. And mocking me each time I walk up them to the bedroom and step on a lump of old glue.  And taking the Dog out a few times in her overly-enthusastic attempts to race up or down them.  So a few weeks ago (and due to impending company!) I finally decided that something had to be done.  Having a good 9 months to consider what to do meant there was a plan at least - and we settled on painting them (again!) and adding some stair treads (not an entire runner).

However, picking out the right tread was HARD! I'm very opinionated, so I would look at them online (because buying them at Home Depot or Lowes was out of the question due to the $$), choose a couple that I thought I liked, and then ask J what he thought.  His response is usually to look at the first one and say, "Hmm. Yeah that ones ok." and then look at the next one and say, "Yeah. That one is ok too." and so on.  Helpful, right?  There was also the added issue of these stairs being very narrow (since they were attic stairs originally)  So after at least three weeks of searching, I finally just stopped myself and picked one.  We went with these off of Amazon.

Once I hit the "send" button I quickly entered into the panicked "OMG I need to start this project NOW" so I raced to HD to pick up supplies.  First I spent my Friday evening filling in every single, little nail hole from those stupid metal strips with wood putty.  I tried using a putty knife, but the wood putty kept falling off, so I resorted to just using my fingers and shoving the putty in as well as I could.  After a while the tips of my fingers were rock solid with putty and I had to chip it off and start fresh!

The next morning, I proceeded to  Dexter-ize (minus the body, of course) the hallway.  I should have taken pictures, but my hands were pretty damn gross at that point, and then they were quickly covered in sanding dust.  As was everything else that I didn't Dexter-ize.  I literally spent my entire Saturday sitting or kneeling awkwardly on the stairs while sanding off old glue. 9 hours.  I felt like my shoulder was going to punch me in the face and then walk out the door.  First I used a quarter-sheet orbital stander to sand everything once with 80 grit and then went back over everything with a 220 in order to prep it for paint.  Then I rested (after cleaning up the mess I had made and wiping the stairs down so that we could walk up them to go to bed that night!).

Sunday I set an alarm. Yeesh.  By 7 a.m. I was drinking coffee while taping off the stairs so that I could paint the risers.  And I had the first coat on by 10 a.m.  Second coat went on around 3, and the third around 6 or 7 that night while J was watching Drive in the living room... which, from the sounds of it, I wasn't sorry to miss.  Anyway - what a difference already!

We lived with the stairs in this state for a few days until the treads arrived later that same week. But, because I was trying to be ahead of the game, I had already gone to HD and picked up some samples.  Big mistake.  Who knew  there were so many different damn shades of freaking brown there are?! GEEZ!

Needless to say, my first attempt at picking a paint color without the treads was a total, clashing-of-brown-hues failure. So I took one of the treads with me the next time I went to HD and pulled out every possibility of brown to hold against it.  Then I took all of the paint chips with me across the aisle in HD to the patio furniture and laid it all out.  Yes - the guys at the paint counter watched me the entire time with raised eyebrows - BUT I did find the perfect shade of brown called "Breakfast Blend".  It's named after a coffee flavor, so it must be meant to be.  I did grab another sample (we've got so many of those little Behr pots of samples I'm going to have to dream up a project to use them in!) and tried it out - decided it was still perfect on the steps, and went back for a quart the next day.  The following Saturday I put on three coats of "Breakfast Blend" let it all cure for a day, and then set about taping down the treads!  And ta da!

Major improvement, wouldn't you say?!  I like how the two-tones of the carpet treads tie together the darker brown paint and the lighter brown floor of the hallway.  Now all we need to do is paint the stairwell and the hallway and the upstairs study area, and... and... and...