Stairs - The Final Installment!

The never-ending stair project is finally finished !  I love how it (finally) all came together.  I also love that is is D.O.N.E.  Not going to lie, this was one looong project.  I won't be changing it up anytime soon!

First, just to recap - here's the "before" - dark wood, white carpeting and cabin-in-the-woods end caps.

Two coats of primer  and three coats of paint later, no more dark wood.  Unfortunately it took awhile for me to find this magic tool:

This little gizmo makes painting the banisters orders of magnitude easier than using a brush.  It fits in between the banisters, the pad hold plenty of paint and produces a  smooth finish- all for less than $3.00! 

I painted the stairs and risers a clean semi-gloss white.  The board that runs down the side of the stairs ( I now know this is called a "skirt board") is Sherwin Williams Sea Spray (941) - a greenish, blue that changes depending on the light.

I had originally thought I would get a runner at Lowe's - economical, convenient and boring practical.  The Captain would have none of it.  He thought that after spending weeks sanding, filling holes, priming and painting I should find a runner I loved.  Bless his pointed head - we started shopping for runners.  California Daughter thought we should investigate Carpet Liquidators.  Trust me, shopping there is not for the  faint of heart!  It's in a huge warehouse, rugs piled everywhere and basically a self-help affair.  But we found a beautiful wool runner for a fraction of the cost of man-made fiber ones at the rug stores.  Yes, it was much more expensive than Lowe's, but it's just what I was envisioning.



The Captain did the installation - my hands are not strong enough to pull and staple, so I did the supervising.  We rented the stapler and "knee kicker" - a handy tool that grips the carpet and when braced on your knee, pushes it tight into the space between the tread and the riser.  The staples are very narrow and long. 

A couple of favorite  extra touches completed the transformation.  The baseboard on the landing was pitiful - two narrow pieces of wood butted end-to-end.

We  found a piece of moulding in the attic, and armed with a $15.00 mitre box and saw, gussied up the landing.  I love it!

The caps on the newel posts were rough as well .( And here, covered in sanding dust)

 Check out the new ones!

Loving my new stairs and loving that they are finished! (Well, nearly  - there's a section of the runner that will go on the landing once it's bound.)