Hello Friends! It just dawned on me that I worked on a bunch of projects this past spring and summer, and I’ve been totally slacking on sharing them here on the blog.
Time to play catch-up! 😅
At the beginning of this year, I set out with one goal: to complete our foyer, work my way onto making over the stairs, and then up to the second-floor landing/hallway. And although I had a few setbacks, and stepped away several times—I’m feeling great about my progress.
Let’s get into it!
I’ve shared about our foyer makeover Part1, Part2 and Part 3:
Painted Stairs
Now for the stairs, I realized I never documented the process here.
It all started with covering up the old beat-up stair risers. I’m pretty sure these steps were originally covered in carpet, based on the plethora of dents, holes and scratches that just looked awful through the black satin paint. So we headed to the hardware store and grabbed some 1/2” plywood.
I cut them down to size with my table saw and installed them right over the old risers. I had actually cut some down for the treads as well, (based on this YouTube tutorial) but decided against it, after reading a ton of comments, I became concerned about safety and longevity.
But, I continued to cover up the old risers with liquid nail and plywood. I then nailed them with my brad nailer, and caulked them.
Lastly, I painted the risers smoked tan by Behr. Then I got stumped for four months trying to decide what to do with the treads🙃
I originally wanted to try to stain them again, but the quality of the wood is terrible—
So I decided to paint the whole staircase Smoked Tan as well . . .
I should have just painted them from the beginning, but —- you live and you learn.
DIY STAIR RUNNER
Next, it was time to add the stair runner (although it took about 5 months for me to get to this point).
I found this beautiful stair runner and realized how perfectly it coordinates with my paint choice for our stairs.
I used two of the runners and joined them under the tread of one of the steps.
Although this is not the first time I’ve installed a runner on these steps, I did have to change my approach since the last time after some trial and error.
Because this runner was a bit thicker than the last runner I used, I learned that I didn’t actually need the rug pads.
Click here to learn more about how I install stair runners.
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I am so happy with this project and I get so many compliments on it. I especially love it because I think it will last quite a bit longer than the last one due to the durability of this runner.
I’ll be back soon to talk about the makeover the second floor landing underwent.
