Project: Stairway To Kevin

"Yes dear, I said I'll work on the stairs, you don't have keep reminding me every six months."

After being in the house for five years I decided to tackle the one thing I've looked at with nervous trepidation and dread: the stairs. But no more taunting me with its ugliness...I was going to take a shot and beat it, even if I died trying.

First, I have to give you the back story. Kelly decided to take a week's vacation with her mother. When she booked this I resolved it would be a good time to suit up and go to war (admittedly that's how I thought of it). Up til then I had told her it was too big a job and something we would have to think about. Well I thought about it, and opted to surprise her when she came back. A risk, I know, but hopefully one that paid off.

Dropped her off at the airport, came home and went to work.

Ok, so here is what I was dealing with: waterfall carpet from the days of Love Boat, Cabbage Patch and Spandex. Was Kelly even born when this carpet was installed?

Time to lift the carpet up and see what is underneath

Not so bad. Felt alright to keep removing. Ripping out carpet is a pain, but not too hard. I thought ripping up the tac strip would be a cinch as well. Up until I realized that it was put in with 2 inch nails (instead of the regular 1/4"). Arggg! Nails! Enemy of the 1st degree! 

Now that everything is off the stairs, let's see what we are dealing with. 

CRAP!  I was kind of hoping for nice untouched oak that just needed a little TLC. Nope, of course not. These needed a major overhaul. They looked like they were put in when the house was built and became so destroyed that carpet was the easiest solution. Guess they never heard of drop cloth back in the 80's. Just to note, I didn't have the option of replacing the treads due to a) the spindles being attached and didn't want to remove them as they can't be replaced without also replacing the custom built handrail, and b) it would have meant replacing the side riser board which, again, I had no intrest in doing. 

Time to get at it. Start with ripping out staples. Must have been 30-40 per stair! Double Arggg! Staples! Enemy of the second degree! (I have a lot of enemies.)

Staples everywhere, and they were deeply embedded to boot. 

I was kind of hoping all it needed was a heavy grit sandpaper and then I could power through sanding in an hour or two. But after one hour the first stair wasn't even close to being ready. This was proving to be more difficult then I had anticipated. (That will be the title of my Home Renovations book: 'It's Never Like In My Head')

One hour of sanding and this was all I had to show for it. 

There was no way I could continue at this pace, so time to shift gears and break out the stain stripper. 

Anyway, there is no real pictures of just how ineffective the stripper was, because it basically did nothing. Not even a single bubble. What was on these stairs? When I used a putty scrapper to clean off the stripper, the only thing that came off was the stripper. 

My final resort was to use a paint scrapper. Since the stairs were in such bad shape anyway, there was not much risk. Not the fastest, but at least it was progress. 

Top stair un-scrapped, the bottom stair scrapped. 

At this point I was able to start sanding the rest of it off. 

B&D mouse sander for around the spindles

Looking a little more respectable after a day of sanding.

Once I got the sanding where I needed it to be, it was time to make some adjustments. First was the screws. They were raised. So I pulled each one out, counter-sunk the holes and then replaced the screws so they were 1/8" below grade.

But if you think that was a pain....guess what? NAILS. Who nails in stairs! (To your battle stations!)

The nails were also flush with the grade and therefore would be visible. That just won't do. So I nail punched them 1/8" below grade as well.

Here you can see both nail and screw placed below grade.

It is now time to take wood filler and patch every nail hole, every screw, every staple hole. Couple hours later every possible hole was filled.

More filler then the middle ten episodes of a network drama (tv joke)

At this point I re-sanded everything. But it is here that I made a bad decision, as you will come to see in a bit. I sanded the filler down smooth, much like you would drywall filler compound, meaning I over filled and then just sanded smooth. (well get back to this in a second).

Next it was time to stain the treads. I wasn't sure what color to stain them. I wanted it to look rich and ideally match both the existing handrail (as I really didn't want to have to do that) and the laminate floor. I tall order I know. So I went out and bought a replacement stair tread and a couple choices of stain and brought them home. They were terrible. So I went back and got a few stain samples. After several tries, I decided to do a little experiment with stain then wiping on a solid paint. I was happy with the result, so I went back and bought a quart of each.

It was time to take a deep breath and begin the staining process.

Well, one good thing happened, and one bad.

First the good. The stain I had chosen as my base, turned out to look completely different on the actual stairs compared to the replacement tread I bought, and I didn't need to use the paint. In fact it ended up matching both the handrail and the laminate floors pretty well. A welcome result as once you stain, there is really no going back without wasting considerable time.

However, it became obvious that I didn't sand off enough of the filler as it was totally obvious where I had applied it. I had to wait for the stain to dry and go back and sand away all the excess filler that was not actually in a 'hole'. What a colossal time waster. It was like sanding all over again.

Can you tell where the filler is? Looked horrible. 

The lower stair with the filler sanded down further and the upper stair with the filler not yet fixed. 

I was starting to make progress. I re-sanded and did a second coat of stain and it looked pretty good. Not brand new, more rustic in nature. But still, it looked promising.

Staining in progress

Staining complete

I let the stain dry overnight and it was time to add the polyurethane.

I didn't want to get the poly on the walls or spindles as that is too hard to paint over, so I started with three hours of taping everything up. Then it was time to start shinning these bad boys up.

Two coats with a light sanding in between.

Late at night with the second coat of finish applied. 

By now it was late Friday night and Kel was coming home tomorrow. Still lots to do with painting the spindles and stringers, So, Saturday morning up early at 5am and right at it.

First, re-tapping, then sanding then painting.

You can see where over the years the carpet had made painting a uneven pain for me. 

Anyway, two coats of white on riser, stringer, and spindles. Remove the tape and....NOOOO!

Every single stair had leaked paint on the tread. 

Removing excess paint

Here is a tip. When you need to carefully remove spilled or leaked paint, dampen a rag in water, cover a putty knife with the rag and slowly rub the excess paint off. Work slowly so as not to scratch the stair treads. Anyway....and hour later and all done just in time to go pick Kelly up at the airport. Let's hope she likes it.

Here is what was thought to be the finished look.

Remember when I said it was a risk. Well as it turns out....

Kelly came home from vacation and said. "Oh, you did the stairs. Well it's a good start."

*sigh* That will be the subtitle to my book.

So after the disappointment and frustration subsided, I coaxed out of her she wanted them darker, to match more the dark part of the laminate rather than the softer shades.

Now what?

I had already urethaned and didn't want to sand back down to bare wood and re-stain.

After ruminating on it for sometime and many google searches later I found that Minwax sells a product just for this purpose. Polyshades lets you stain over top of already urathaned wood in order to change the color. It is really a tinted urathane. So its like adding more topcoats just with a slight hue. On the website it shows you what the wood color you have is, and which product to use to get the result you wanted.

Time to roll the dice again. The risk being, that I needed to test it, but whatever I do, in the end, I have to do to the rest that way so they match. This was painful.

Well, here goes nothing. I picked the step that gets the most sunlight and would look the lightest and therefore was my worst case step. Lightly sanded it and applied two coats of the new finish.

Top step refinished. Bottom original. 

Damn. Why does she always have to be right. It did look better.

Ok, Now just need to do the rest including the banister and handrail. As well I went back and did more touch ups to the white with an artist brush for cleaner-ish lines.

But we were not done yet.

The idea the entire time was to add a runner to the staircase. Mostly because the stairs do get used heavily, and remember now that the top coat finish is also the color, so any wear would be really obvious. I'm not sure if you realize this, but stairs get a lot of foot traffic (just saying).

We wanted to have the runner on the stairs be the same as the upstairs carpet so everything just flowed evenly. So Kelly picked out the carpet she wanted and the installers came in and laid new carpet in the upstairs master bedroom, walk-in closet, hallway and down the stairs.

Here is the finished look.

Some shots of the upstairs carpeting

Furniture removed during installation

With Furniture (excuse the messy bed, quickly made it for the pic...pretend I did it properly) (and no those stairs are not for me, they are for the dog...all of you are hilarious)

Closet

Hallway

Here is the gratuitous B&A shot

Well that is a major part of the Home Improvement project completed.

I guess its subjective as to whether you like this or not, but I'm calling this battle a win. And don't try to tell me otherwise.

We better never move.

And now Kelly likes it. What a relief. (That is really the big win here.)

As always, thanks for checking this out. And now to break out the slinky.

K&K

Project: Home Office

So it has been a few months since we last did anything and winter has made Kelly antsy for change. Guess that means it is time for me to get to work.This is not really a renovation...more of a redecoration. But it was still a fair bit of effort.

Upstairs we use one of our rooms as a home office. Great idea, but we have not put any effort into this room since buying the house. Time to give it that facelift it always deserved (not in the Meg Ryan way...more of the Catherine Zeta Jones kind).

Here are some before pics:

Small picture, big wall...think we mastered negative space decorating! 

We really didn't like anything about it. The blue walls = yuck! The desk I have had for over 19 years that was always meant to be a starter desk and has become a permanent fixture = yuck! The lighting fixture = yuck!

As always, here are the ground rules:
1) We need a desk that is both attractive and functional.
2) Can't have anything that blocks the window.
3) Need to do something with the closet to optimism storage space...reduce desk clutter. Also must have room to grow.
4) Replace ceiling-fan/light.
5) Keep the couch. It is awesome to have a reading couch in the office, or a space to watch on-line shows at. Couch is getting old (19 years, got it when I moved out of parents house) but it is still comfortable and since the space will only really be used by Kel and myself...that is ok. But it is black, so have to work with that.
6) We will not be replacing the flooring in here...no practical point. And can always be done later (it won't be done later, who am I kidding).

To start...get everything out of the room. Take apart the desk and throw it away (don't even bother trying to resell it...too much hassle). Then...abolish that ghastly blue. We went with CIL 'Cotton Grey' (I am told it is super popular on Pintrest).

Next, replace that atrocious ceiling fan light.

Now time to build the desk. Luckily it wasn't ruined as it was delivered when we weren't home and they left the shipping boxes piled up in a snow bank outside the front door. Idiots!

It took almost a whole day just to assemble the desk, it had a lot of sections and hardware pieces.

Oh...sneak peak! 

The bane of Kel's existence seems to be exposed cables. It is tough to hide PC peripheral cables as they are all extraneous lengths of cable and the desk has no built-in cable tray. Anyway, here are some shots of how I dressed them into the back. Not the cleanest job, but at least you can't see anything from the front.

I chose not to put the PC in the cupboard to the left as once the backing was put on the desk there would be no airflow front or back. I will use that cupboard for other items, the PC is on the floor for now. 

Almost there, onto the closet.

The old closet

Just like in Kelly's walk-in closet, when I took it apart, it damaged the wall. Arggggg!

Here is the new closet enhancements after patching, sanding, repainting and installing new shelving.

Lot's of storage capacity now.

The hard work is over, now time for the final reveal after Kel added her decorating touches.

Whiteboard in the office is Gold-star!

There is more decorating to come as Kel finds items she likes and we'll replace the side table with something that matches the desk more, but as I type this I am now at the new desk. A much more presentable option then the embarrassment it was. Simple, practical, and a place for everything.

That's it for now

Kev and Kel