Staircase Overhaul...Part 3

After we had the railings and posts painted, the next step of the process was to get the treads put on. We had hired a stair builder to do this for us- they came and measured each of the current stairs in order to build the treads to size and then gave us a sample of the stain to make sure it matched our current hardwood floors.

We were pretty happy with the sample stain, but the hardest part of this decision was which wood to choose. Do we go with maple or oak? We actually have dark bamboo hardwood in many of the rooms in our house (those that aren't tiled) and wanted to make sure the stair treads matched up with that. We originally thought maple, as the look of maple wood (very little grain) is more comparable to the bamboo, however the railing for our stairs is oak. So oak it is! We figured we should keep consistency within the stairs and keeping it all oak was the best way to do this.

So we crossed our fingers, met the guys on the day they arrived with the treads, went to work and prayed that we wouldn't come home to the biggest mistake we'd ever made.

We left our stairs in the morning looking like this:

 

and came home to this:

 

 

Phew! The treads looked fabulous. The stain on the oak is so dark, that its hard to see a lot of the grain (which works well with the bamboo) and the stain colour is pretty much a perfect match. HUGE sigh of relief!

 

However, we were met with a few new challenges. Notice the difference in the end posts on the railings?

 

 

We had talked about cutting off the end of the bottom stair so that it didn't round out, and wanted the railing made into a straight line to the bottom. In doing that, the stair builders had to cut the railing fairly short to deal with the curve at the end, and this resulted in the end post being mounted higher up than we had hoped. Whomp whomp.

 

You may have also noticed the gap of tile that now exists beside the bottom stair. We did think of this before and have extra tile lying around, so we'll be able to fill that hole up. One day we would LOVE to replace these floors (not really our style), but thats a huge (and expensive!) undertaking since these floors carry through our entire main floor into the kitchen. One day...one day.

We also found that the bottom post itself was no longer substantial to hold the weight of the stairs (not literally of course), but it no longer looked large enough. Strike 2.

So the best way to resolve this? Build up the bottom post. This also poses the problem, that we need to build up the 2 posts at the top of the staircase as well....hmmmm...so we're in the process of working on this.

Issue #2- railing colour does NOT match with the treads. Sigh. Our last post filled you in on how much time we spent trying to find the darkest brown paint we could...and apparently its not dark enough! So now, we need to get the railings all repainted...ONCE we find a darker brown or colour match something else that we have that is a very dark SOLID brown colour.

So there you have it. I truly feel that these stairs will look great once we get everything right...its just taking longer than we anticipated. Go figure.

We've still come a long way so far...

I also wanted to mention that the walls will all be painted (the current colours are the choices of the previous homeowners) and the hallway light fixtures replaced (not exactly our style), so a lot more work to do!

The staircase saga continues...

Melissa and Ian

Staircase Overhaul...Part 2

 

Bring in the painter! In continuing our staircase overhaul saga once we had ripped out the carpet, staples and cleaned the floors, the next step was to bring in our painter. If you missed the first part of our staircase project, you can read that here. Since we were working with a special paint and really didn't want to mess this up, we figured it was best to bring in the pro's.

 

Our plan was to paint the posts and railings, since they had already been previous stained and we didn't want to go through the work of stripping, sanding and staining them. So we went on a search to find the darkest brown colour we could find. We wanted the stair treads, railing and posts to all be a dark brown (the same colour as our wood floors), but it was almost impossible to find a perfect brown colour to match. We actually went to 3 different stores for paint chips and ended up going with Behr "Bitter Chocolate"- the darkest we could find without going black:

 

 

 

Here are the railings and end posts painted with the dark brown and all of the small posts re-painted white (we use "Simply White" by Benjamin Moore for all of the white paint in our home) : 

 

 

You can see in this picture, the section of curved railing is the original stain colour and the post has been painted with the dark brown. This was done as we decided to get rid of this curve in the staircase and straighten the bump at the base of the stairs. The plan was to cut part of the railing out and straighten it, so we didn't need that one section painted:

 

 

Once the paint was on the railings we thought it matched fairly well with the floors...until the treads were put on. Once we treads were put on, the railings and posts looked much too light, and we didn't like the contrast of the painted areas with the stained areas. As well, the brown paint was not dark enough. I would recommend either going with a black paint or getting something colour matched if you have that option. We wanted to do a colour match, but they were unable to colour match to a piece of stained wood (the wood grain has too many variations of colours in it and the system would not pick it up properly) so we had to go with a premixed colour.

Back to square one. We are now debating on stripping, sanding and staining the railings (using a tester piece of wood elsewhere in our house) and seeing how they react.

Oh and I also forgot to mention we weren't happy with the post either. Once the railing was cut and straightened it looked fine, however the end post itself is not substantial enough. We are now thinking of replacing it, or finding a way to build up the post to make it larger.

So this project took a couple of unexpected turns. Its going to be more work than we were anticipating, but once its complete I think it will look great and totally change the look of our entrance.

Expect many more posts to come on the progress of these stairs!

Melissa and Ian

Staircase Overhaul

We decided to redo the staircase.

 

It wasn't that we didn't like the function of it, but we are slowly updating this house one room at a time and the staircase was one of those things that constantly kept nagging at us to change it

 

We knew we didn't want the carpet on it anymore, so we decided to take a risk and rip the carpet off, hoping there could POSSIBLY be nice wood treads underneath. Then we would simply stain them and all would be right in the world. Nope plywood. So we knew we needed to stick with full carpeting of the stairs or go for the overhaul. We went for the overhaul. Not without a ton of planning and inspiration pics of course.

 

Here are a few that inspired us (all of which you can find on our Pinterest here, and one that we actually posted to our Facebook page yesterday):

                              Via:  Contemporary Staircase by Cambridge Architect LDa Architecture & Interiors

Via

 

 

 

Via

and the image that has inspired the overall look that we want for our hallway:

 Via

 

So, after seeing all these beauties we couldn't really keep the carpet. One day after work I came home and the carpet was pretty much gone. Ian went to town and ripped it up, staples and all...well most of the staples. Him and I spent another 4 hours one night taking out ALLLL of the staples on these stairs. I can honestly say, there could have been a tornado that destroyed our entire home and that carpet still would have been firmly attached to those stairs there were so many staples.

 

After the staple removing party, we ended up with this:

  

 

And if you didn't see it on our Facebook page, here was the before:

So we're in it now! Carpet is gone, and there's a lot to do to get these beauties made-over. We've actually come quite far this week, and we're almost finished (with a few set-backs of course), but we'll share the next phase of this project with in our next post.

Have a great weekend everyone!
Melissa and Ian