Staircase Update #3

July 13th, 2009

We started renovations on the staircase in late December and finished in May. If we knew at the beginning what we were getting ourselves into, we’d probably have hired someone to do the job. With work and life and laziness getting in the way, we spent weeks with the treads not even secured down. The dog, frightened at the sound they made when she stepped on them, had to be carried up and down the stairs during this time. One morning I was coming down the stairs and stepped too close to the front of a tread. My body went horizontal and I landed on my tailbone. It was like a cartoon, but so not funny. The whole experience was such a typical DIYer renovation experience. We did the best we could, but really, it was a job someone else should have done, someone who knew what they were doing.

I did lots of things out of proper order, and this made for a lot of frustration. I LOATHED to work on the stairs. Looking back, I can hardly believe they turned out as well as they did.

After incorrectly sanding and staining the bottom eight steps, I had to resand and restain them. Horrible. They ended up being slightly lighter than the rest, but no one will ever notice but me.

As I reported in the last update, I wet stripped the paint off the side baseboards, and at the time I thought THAT was difficult. Then I wet stripped the bottom newel post. Eeesh, that sucked. Thankfully, someone asked me if I was using a heat gun, and out I went to Canadian Tire and bought one on sale for $50. I think that saved my sanity. Why didn’t I know about this amazing tool? Ahhh… stripping the risers and the three smaller newel posts was A LOT easier.

Two steps and the top landing were up to 3/4ths of an inch unlevel, and Ty shimmed these to be level. This, however, left the two risers with a large gap at the top. I suppose we should have put new risers on these two, but we didn’t. I used that crazy wood epoxy to fill in the gaps. It worked, but I imagine that wasn’t the best way to solve this problem. And the rise from the eighth stair to the first landing is a lot more than the rest. You get used to it, but I have had someone comment on this after walking down the stairs. The only way to have fixed this would have been to redone the entire staircase.

After all the stripping, sanding, filling, sanding, filling, sanding, priming, and painting the risers, I finally got to the three newel posts. I fell madly in love with the old fir wood underneath those many layers of paint, and I was reluctant to paint them. But, they were really in rough shape, many dings and cuts and old wood filler.

Before: