Stairs. Stairs are
pretty essential to a two-story home. And
they can either look drab, or they can look stunning. Ours were pretty drab. As you can see in the first picture, they
were covered with carpeting from the wall over to almost the end of the
tread. (And yes, that is my husband on the crazy ladder - men!) The part that wasn’t carpeted was
stained oak. The carpeting was pretty grimy
after so many years of kids/adults/dogs going up and down, and the rails were stained oak. (The only “before” pictures I had were from
when hubby was painting the foyer!)
So one summer day Hubby and I were up at the neighborhood
pool relaxing in the sun, talking about the different projects were wanted to
do in our house – which by the way, are MANY – anyway, so he says, “when we get
home I’m just going to pull that carpeting off the stairs.” It was kind of out
of the blue, but hey, I went with it! It is nasty work and he did it all - he's pretty much the best :) (see below - still in swimsuit haha!)
And that’s what he did!
He pulled all the nasty carpet and padding up, and removed all the carpet tack strips. We had no idea if the entire stair tread was oak or not, but we were hoping it
was! Much to our disappointment the
majority of the tread was pine with oak woven into the end that was
showing. We knew that we didn’t want to
replace them, so it was decided that we would paint them. Paint them black! And the posts and handrail, too – I was so excited!
He caulked and primed them – and there they sat. For well over a year. This is real-life folks! Sometimes we just run out of time, or other
things take precedence, but we learn to live with the imperfections and just
appreciate the fact that we have stairs to someday paint.
