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.

New Life for Old Oak

I peeked in this morning at our floor progress, and snapped a few quick shots. They have completed the sanding/filling process, which took a bit longer than expected, and by this morning had stained and gotten the first coat of polyurethane down. They should have the second coat applied today, and the third and final coat down tomorrow, so progress is still fast despite the initial delay.

The finish appears shiny in the pictures only because it was still tacky when I visited this morning. The end result should be a nice satin finish, that glows more than it shines. They did a great job of filling old cracks and sanding out old scratches, and I'm amazed at how new the old floors look, even next to the new ones that were just laid last month.

In the process of refinishing, they put our fridge in its new home (which I'm so obsessed with - it's so nice to have that huge machine tucked away) and put in our inset floor vents, which fit right into their oak surroundings.

So that's more or less it for progress this week - just polyurethane and more polyurethane to go - but then we should be back to having a living room/dining room/office next week, and we've been promised fast progress over the next two weeks until it's all done.

Stripped Naked

Chris and I have been hard at work this weekend, not only painting the back of the house, but also getting the first floor ready for hardwood floor refinishing. I went home over lunch today to look at floor colors, and was amazed to see that they already had the floors almost completely stripped. It's amazing to see nearly 90 year old wood look brand new - and very promising. As they put the samples down, the grain looked bold, fresh and new.

Here are some photos as they were wrapping up the last of the stripping, and getting ready to stain. 

We opted for just a shade lighter than what our floors currently are, matching the stair treads that we replaced and stained ourselves during our first winter in the house. I think the difference will be very subtle (probably only we will ever know), but I have a feeling our dark woodwork and cabinets will really pop against the new finish. No sample color photos though - you'll have to check back for pics of the floor stained tomorrow!

 Recessed register for kitchen floor.

Everything should be stained by the end of today, with the first coat of sealer on and drying. I can't wait to peek at it and get a feel for our fresh new floors.

Done and Done!

Our hardwood floors are finished! Can you believe it? 1.5 days of work, and bam - this is our kitchen floor. (Wrigley and Nino just can't stay away).

 

And don't forget our half bathroom floor (ignore the mud - why should I mop when they're going to sand anyway?): 

It's amazing to me how they've made smooth transitions everywhere from old to new floor, like here in the dining room doorway:

                          

So, we're moving on to the next big thing. And next up to bat is . . . .

 

bathroom wall tile! I can't tell you how happy I was to come home to find some concrete board hanging out on the porch, and lucky 13 boxes of white ceramic subway tile like the one above sitting outside the bathroom door. 

Seeing pieces of the finished product, like the floor and soon the tiles, is oh-so-satisfying! It reminds me of why we're living in a dusty pigsty with no furniture for several weeks, and why we've been saving and living in leaky, creaky ugly rooms for so long. Each of these things is a piece of the final vision, and we couldn't be happier to see them fall into place. 

Speaking of pieces of the final vision, my prints for the half bath arrived today, and I think they're even cuter in person than I expected! Now they just have to stand up to Chris' print quality test - but I have a feeling they'll fare well. 

Solid Ground

This week I learned that sheetrocking is boring. Fortunately it's finally finished, and we're moving on to the next thing which is much less boring . . . (drum roll please) . . . hardwood floor installation! This is much more tangible progress, and considering that over the past two years I've walked barefoot outside about 1,000x more than I've walked barefoot on the kitchen floor - it's a huge, long-awaited improvement.

I came home over lunch to find the sheetrock guy wrapping up (yay!), a big pile of unfinished oak floorboards stacked in our kitchen and two guys looking thoughtfully around our subfloor. When I came home at the end of the day I saw this:

They're lacing the new floorboards into our existing ones to create a seamless look, so that only we (and all of you) will know which ones are 85 years old and which ones are brand new. The last week of the renovation the entire first floor will be refinished, completing our ruse.

At this point I'd say installation appears to be about 1/3 complete, so hopefully we'll have all the new floors in by the end of the week. Already I feel a huge difference walking on what's been installed. It's totally solid - no creaks, no soft spots. I can't wait to see it all in.