Refinishing the Basement Stairs

When Chris told me he would get three weeks paternity leave when Ivy was born, I had a feeling this could spell trouble. While it was great having him home so long, I haven't seen him sit still for more than 10 minutes at a time during our 5+ years of marriage (except when he sleeps through the BBC Pride & Prejudice, which I believe every husband should be required to watch once a year).

Well, it turns out my suspicions were correct! The day after we brought home our newborn, our house rung out with the sounds of random orbital sanding and nail gunning. He had decided to attack our gross basement stairs, which run off the kitchen.

During our kitchen remodel, our nasty old water-damaged kitchen floor was replaced with new hardwoods. The new boards stop under the basement door, and from that point on the floor is covered with original, very roughed-up hardwoods that were painted white at some point.

Before: gross stairs and landing.

Public service announcement: White painted floors do not wear well, and look dirty all the time.

Ok, back to business here. So, from the kitchen door there are three steps down to a landing, where the stairs turn and continue down to the basement. Chris decided to tackle from the kitchen door to the landing, as this portion of the stairs is actually visible from the kitchen when we open the door. We'll probably get to the remaining stairs someday, but they're much less of a priority.

Based on our usual mindset that we like to reuse materials whenever it makes sense, the original plan was to refinish flooring by the kitchen door and on the landing, and replace the old stair treads with new ones. However, as Chris got the boards stripped and sanded, the boards at the top of the steps were pretty rough underneath.

The old, stripped boards just can't keep up with the pretty kitchen floor.

These beaten up, gaping boards looks especially bad next to the kitchen floorboards, which were installed and finished just two years ago. Fortunately, we had just enough board left over from the remodel to replace board in the area, which looked much better. He purchased a few new red oak treads at our local home improvement store and replaced the three stair treads, and stuck with our original plan to strip and sand down the original oak floorboards on the landing to prepare these boards to be restained and finished.

The newly installed floorboards blend into the kitchen flooring. 

Old stair treads are removed (giving a lovely view of the water heater) and Chris sized new treads prior to installing.

Chris is a big fan of Citristrip - a non toxic and minimally stinky way to remove gooey paint. He paints it on, lets it sit overnight and scrapes it off with a putty knife.

The project drug on a while because we needed access to the basement from time to time, so he could not just keep applying stain and polyurethane over and over. We had to take the occasional break between coats to do laundry and get groceries from our deep freeze, so this really was a great project to tackle while we were both home from work.

Plus, we figured while we had the area all torn up, we needed to do some work to the trim and walls in order to really get full payoff for the hard work. Chris capped the existing baseboards for a more finished look, and installed new shoe molding. We caulked and painted all the trim, and I painted the walls using leftover Sherwin Williams Dorian Gray from Ivy's nursery.

Once the work was all done, the area was quickly transformed.

   

The old trim got a major facelift with some sanding and caulking, and a new cap piece attached.

The landing flooring is a bit more rustic than the rest of our wood floors, but we decided we are good with that and chose not to replace all the floorboards. We'll look for a nice doormat to put inside the door anyway, which will cover all that you see from the kitchen. And while distressed looking, the boards are perfectly smooth underfoot - which is the most important part for us!

While some may find it strange to invest this much time in basement stairs, we are thrilled with the improvement! Even if no one sees it but us we feel it was a very worthwhile effort, improving an area that we use every day for very little cost.

DIY Wooden Doormat

Following construction of our deck last fall, we found ourselves with an abundance of cedar scraps. It was really nice lumber, in various sizes and lengths, so not really useful for any large projects, but we still felt that wood so nice deserved to be put to good use.

Enter Martha Stewart. A friend sent us this online tutorial, and we felt it was the perfect new life for our leftover boards. Fast forward an hour or two, and voila!

We followed the tutorial pretty precisely, so you can see the step-by-step there. Our only changes were the size (we made it extra wide to fit right in line with the trim around our 36" front door), and we used natural colored nylon rope rather than sisal for durability. We love that it brings some wood onto the concrete floor of our porch, and it knocks dirt off shoes very well with all of its little edges and cracks.

Have you completed any fun, simple DIY projects? Or have you recently come across any great how-to's that you're itching to try out?

Baby Room Book Ledge

Red oak book ledge with some of our favorites on display

B suggested we make a book ledge in the baby room that goes across the long wall. Thankfully, with a bunch of old oak left over from our kitchen remodel, I can make these in a matter of a few hours.

The vertical trim piece of a doorway is almost perfect for this type of project. I ripped the piece so it's about 3" wide, and nailed on smaller strips on the back and front ledge to create a channel for the books.

We debated on painting it white, but B elected for the dark wood stain.

Installing requires locating a stud, so we ended up drilling a bunch of tiny holes behind the ledge until we hit something solid (the joys of plaster and lathe).

I think we may add another eventually, but for now, I like the simplicity of one long shelf across the room.

Should hold books until the kid tries to climb the wall with shelf.

You can see where we made some pencil marks for alignment

$20 Antique Door - Score!

A few weeks ago I went to Habitat ReStore in Kansas City for fun on a lunch break. I joke that casual trips to ReStore are "dangerous" because you will walk into the store with no intentions of buying and leave with an unplanned weekend project.

My last trip was a classic example. We quickly stumbled upon a pile of $20 two panel closet doors that perfectly match our house's style. I reluctantly texted B a picture (below), knowing this would pique her interest.

Fast forward 4 hours later, and we're rushing across town in our van to buy three of these doors for our upstairs closets. We could have bought more, but since these all required stripping and refinishing to match our house, I didn't want overcommit to stripping (see exterior house project).

Well, once I got to "stripping," things got really messy. I'll spare you the pictures, but it did take an entire bottle of this stuff to get about 6 layers of white paint off the doors.

The exciting/scary part of doing this is that you have no idea what wood type and finish you'll be left with. I was afraid it would be cheap pine and be a total waste of time. Thankfully, the wood was beautiful and stained up perfectly!

Total time was about 12 hours. I spent about an hour every weeknight for two weeks, and then finally hung the door this weekend.

Here's the skinny 24" closet door in all its restored glory

We kept the original doorknob and spray painted it oil rubbed bronze

The doors ended up being a beautiful pine. I love the thin grain on the frame. Also, we cut out the original panel trim and replaced them with a simple shaker style trim. This saved loads of stripping time.

I absolutely love the idea of restoring old things - the only risk is that sometimes you'll end up spending ridiculous amounts of time and $ to restore that cheap item you found. With this project, I probably spent $50 on this door, including some new materials, like trim, bondo, and fixing some door jamb hardware. The time was a little bit much, but it quickly became a labor of love, so I have no regrets (yet).

New doors like this cost about $240 each, so I think we did ok.

And just for reference, here's the before/after pic.

Mobile Modifications

One of the very first things I purchased for the nursery was this mobile, from seller WildChildShop on Etsy. I decided early on that I liked the idea of a mobile that would move naturally in the breeze from the van or vent in the room, and wanted something made of natural materials that would fit well with the decor of the room.

Online this one looked perfect - I loved the rustic wood, and the cranes hanging from it are made of maps, giving it great blues and greens for color, and the lightweight strings and cranes should have lots of natural movement.

When it arrived, I loved it instantly. The cranes, held onto fishing line by little pearls, were so colorful and sweet, and it had a very light and airy feel. The one part that bothered me a little was the branch at the top. It was not quite as rough and rustic as the one in the photo, and felt a bit heavy compared to the rest of the mobile.

So it was Carpenter Chris to the rescue! He went through wood scraps he keeps on hand, and came up with this very light and sweet solution. These two pieces of oak, measuring about 1/4" x 1/4" x 12" each, provide a nice light, simple top for the mobile, and match the tone of the room much better.

From there it was a simple matter of drilling and staining the wood to get it ready to hang. The original mobile came with three strands of cranes, so I cut a few cranes off the bottom of each strand and strung them up on some new fishing line to create a fourth, reusing the pearls to hold them on the line. A little more fishing line to string the whole thing to the ceiling (from a little hook I spray painted oil rubbed bronze, to match the rest of the hardware in the room) and we're done! 

And here's perhaps the most important angle - crib's eye view. I love the X in the middle with the cranes lined up on the corners, and the fun shadows it casts on the ceiling in the lamplight.

So for exactly $0 (using fishing line and wood scraps we already had, and rearranging cranes and pearls from the original mobile) it's an even more custom piece than it already was - all ready for our little guy or girl to gaze it sweetly after sleeping all through the night, every single night. Right? Hello?

And now, for the current state of the nursery. Here's what you see looking in from the hallway:

Standing by the closet door:

And sitting on the chaise lounge in the corner:

It's really beginning to feel like things are coming together (other than the mess of stuff we're currently storing in the crib), but there is still a lot to do. Our next steps are:

• installing baseboards
• adding a rug
• recovering the chaise lounge
• adding hardware to the dressers
• replacing closet doorknob 
• hemming the sheer curtains
• making a few pillows for the chaise and rocker

Once these steps are done, we'll be on to the fun stuff - accessories! I've been collecting lots of great things to decorate the walls, and we have a few projects planned as well to finish things off.

Oh, and Wrigley wants you all to know that you don't have to worry - the last piece of the mobile did not go to waste!

Nursery Decorating Chapter 2: When in Rome

And by "in Rome", I mean when you are living with an upstairs that is completely in pieces, and there are paint rollers and brushes everywhere - you might as well paint dressers!

First, a little history. The two dressers and mirror we're using in this room are part of a five-bedroom set I inherited from my great grandmother when I was ten (the other two pieces are a nightstand, which I currently use, and a twin sized brass headboard - which could be great little girl bedroom material someday shall we need it).

She had purchased them a few years before when she moved into a senior living apartment, and when she passed away she left them to me, which was a pretty mind-blowing thing for a ten-year-old! So, they have very precious history to me, but are not precious antiques - making them fair game for a fresh coat of paint and some new hardware!

Although, I do think Nino preferred them before . . . .

The dressers had great, embellished shapes, but the feathery hardware and gold painted highlights really dated them and made them feel heavy. Plus, the ivory painted finish on them had taken a bit of a beating over the years and was in need of a refresh anyway.

So they all got a light sanding, some wood putty and a fresh coat of paint. From there, the putty/sand/putty/sand process began to get the fronts of the drawers perfectly smooth over the old hardware holes. While I haven't selected new hardware yet, I am confident the old holes will not work (they had numerous different sizes and would be impossible to match). 

We use Sherwin Williams ProClassic Interior Oil-Based paint for all our woodwork - trim, cabinets and furniture - and used the color Creamy for these pieces. It's funny paint to use - very sticky, prone to drips and incredibly slow to dry - but once it's done the finish is incredibly smooth and durable, so it's worth the extra work.

Once the painting process was finished, here's what we ended up with.

I love how the embellishments on the furniture drawers and legs show up so much more now that they have a uniform finish. The ivory feels clean and fresh, and really helps the pieces feel nursery-appropriate.

So, hardware is the next step. I have been planning on using blue milk glass knobs for the drawers - something like this:

And while I love the look, I'm feeling like it's not quite what these dressers need. I ordered some samples to play with, both of the milk glass knobs and a simpler, crystal and bronze option like this:

The crystal is still whimsical, but a bit cleaner and less "baby-y" than the milk glass - so I'm anxious to get both options in and see what we like. Either way, these dressers have come a long way from the gold and beaten up yellow-cream they were a week ago.

And speaking of When in Rome, here's a little more to add some excitement to your Wednesday. Because every day is better with a little Will Ferrell.

Shingle Refurbish - South Wall (Side 3 of 4)

Before and after Mount Etna blue Duration Paint from Sherwin Williams.

The weather finally turned to spectacular this weekend. Our March and April were unusually rainy and cold, so we've held off on typical outdoor stuff.

I'm about 70% done with this project. The last 30% might be the most difficult, as my motivation seems to taper with house projects as they span in time. Thankfully, I've found a new source of motivation in a pregnant wife. I've got about 6 months to put this project in the books.

If you're keeping score, I started the south side last Fall. After this past weekend, I'm happy to say the bottom half of this side is done. I'd love to put up a new post in June with the entire South wall complete. Fingers crossed.

Looking up, you can see what work I have ahead of me.

We'd like to replace the middle window asap. You can see it's pretty beat up. The paint in this section of shingles were really blistered and came off swimmingly.

Some shingles just aren't worth the effort of stripping. The old paint is secure and smooth, so I've learned to embrace a little bit of irregularity. 

Out on a Ledge

We're snowed in at home for the second time in a week, so consider these extra projects and posts a result of Mother Nature's recent wrath on the midwest.

We have talked for years about needing to add some interest around the seating area in our living room. While we have some great architectural elements in the windows and stairwell, we've always felt a little additional color and personality would do a lot.

 
So we've focused on this half wall to the right. It's a challenging spot because of the open cutout to the stairwell on the top third of the wall, where we traditionally think to add decor. We love that detail of the room though, and wanted to add some interest below that compliments it.

C has tons of leftover oak from trim taken out of our various remodel jobs, and we love putting that 90-year-old oak back into the house. So he went through his scraps and built a narrow ledge for the wall.

We filled it up some some of our favorite small hardcover books, as well as a few photos and small pieces of artwork - we even included the post card we recently made into a poster! It instantly added a lot of color and interest to our little corner. 

We look forward to rotating the contents on the shelves for different seasons and occasions, as well as how it will provide us an excuse to keep collecting small cards and pieces of artwork. I imagine it full of holiday cards in December, and changing out photos as we take trips and as our nieces grow up.

This gives a nice new focal point in our living room - I think the only real wall space left to think about is the two spots beneath the sconces. I'd love to have something there, but the challenge is finding objects the right size (the spaces are fairly narrow) and something interesting, but neutral so it won't compete with the items on our ledge and our brightly colored pillows.

These small changes in our living room are a lot of fun though - and we're not finished yet! Watch for a few more over the next week or two!

Happy Bench

The weekend before Thanksgiving, Chris and I were driving home and saw this sad little bench on the curb. Upon inspection we saw that, while the wood slats were beyond shot, the size and shape of it was very charming, and the wrought iron of the bench was very nice and in great shape. So we brought it home and planted it in the garden. 

The wood appeared to be maple, but someone had painted it dark red a while ago. The red paint was peeling and the wood was rotting. I liked the idea of painting it - our garden is surrounded by beautiful cedar and if this bench was going to live there, it needed some color to get the attention it deserved.   

The first step, though, was replacing the wood slats - all of the ones on the seat were rotting, and one of the pieces of the back as well. So CJ and I headed to Habitat ReStore - a materials source that has been very good to us - and we found a 1"x6"x16' piece of pine that would work great. It was a nice clean piece of wood - no knots - and would be just right. It was truly 16' long though so we borrow their saw and broke it down in the parking lot so it would make the drive home. 

Once we were home my handy hubby cut them down to size

and installed them.

I tested the new and improved bench out, and it was nice and sturdy. 

At this point it was getting pretty late in the day, and it just so happened to be an absolutely beautiful day, so we decided to quite our work for the day and put that old rotting wood to work. 

 

We didn't burn quite all the old lumber though. Wrigley claimed this slat for himself and insisted on fetching it as we relaxed by our fire. 

 

 

So this morning, here's what our little bench looked like:

I looked through our stores of exterior paint and found we had about 3/4 of a quart of Glitzy Gold left from painting the back grate of our house. This cheery yellow seemed just the right thing for our new seat. 

So we painted.

And a few short hours later this little bench looked like new. The yellow brings out the green in the metal, and shows brightly in front of the trellis and fence.

The last painter got red paint onto some of the hardware, and for now we're leaving it. It could be fun - an homage to its former life. Or if it bothers us I will drop some matte black paint into the recessed holes to fake the screws' original color. 

There are also a few spots where dabs of paint bled through tape onto the metal. I have a feeling it will flake off pretty quickly, but if it does not a little steel wool will correctly it quickly.

In all, I'm thrilled with the upgrade. We probably won't sit on this guy a ton - maybe occasionally here and there when we're enjoying the garden. But it will be the perfect inviting spot when we want to. The rest of the time it will likely be a set down place for garden tools and vegetables while I'm working.

At a total cost of $4.80 (for the pine from Habitat ReStore), I'd say this was a great upgrade.