One Step at a Time

As usual, I rather unintentionally got myself into another household project.  You may remember when my husband got fed up with the carpeted stairs.  He ripped out all the carpet upstairs in the hallway and down the stairs.  It's been a while.  In that time, I also painted the hallway the same lemon mint green as the family room downstairs. 

It's beautiful in the family room, which has a sliding glass door to let in the light, but in the upstairs, dark hallway...  it's rather intense.  It did brighten it up, but not in a good way.  I have it a long time to decide if I liked it or didn't and finally decided that I really didn't.  So I went to Lowes and picked out a new color - Lotus Flower, which is a greeny/yellowy white.  The beauty of it is how well it reflects light.  Perfect for our dark hallway.



Painting is an easy project for me. Cut in. Roll it on. Don't lean on the wall until it's dry. You can change the whole feel of a room with painting. But being me, I like a perfect job. The hallway includes the staircase. And when Darling Man ripped out the carpet, it left glue and bits of carpet fibers on the wall. I cannot paint over it... I have to clean that up.

The stairs are in need of repair anyway.  The treads are squeaky and anyone going up them makes a terrible racket.  This includes the cats.  Since I had to sand down the walls right next to the stairs, I decided to pull up the treads, sand properly - and I might as well deal with the stairs while I'm at it. 

I've been thinking about this for a while, how to do the stairs.  Because it is dark wood, that was never meant to be seen in the first place, I decided to paint the risers and stain the treads.  I didn't have any stain on hand, but I could get a feel for how it would turn out by painting the riser when I painted the wall, which would be the same color.

It turned out looking pretty good.  The wall cleaned up nicely and painted smoothly.  Two coats of paint had the riser looking good.  I only got one stair done, but I worked a lot out as I did it.  There's a plan of action now.

One down, fourteen to go!