My stairs have now been completely uncovered and the wood is beautiful. But, check out what the original painters left for me to clean up:
Look Mom, I've got a demonic cat and "Go Faster Stripes" on my stairs! What a pain this will be to fix up. Not so much on the risers (the vertical part of the stairs), but on the actual steps themselves. The risers will be primed and then painted white since I'm tired of trying to kill myself at night when walking up the steps in the dark, so the stripes are no big deal there.
Here's the view from above complete with matching cat:
Can you see the stripes now? Also, do you see the one stair that doesn't match any of the others? We had to replace that one. It had split into two complete pieces and the builders had just rammed in a bunch of extra nails to keep in place. It was going to be covered in carpet, so who cared right? Combined with the careless painting, that's just plain sloppy all the way around in my book. If you're going to do a job, why don't you just do it right the first time? Except in knitting of course, you're allowed to fudge mistakes there, aren't ya?
The mess on the bottom step is where I'm using paint stripper to get the paint off. This is going to be another slow, PITA process I'm afraid and one that will be better and quicker done once school starts back.
Once that's done however, I have a decision to make. We plan on changing the floor color eventually (a good ways down the road.) I hate the color that the wood has been stained. I really dislike light oak colors and prefer dark cherry. Do I go ahead and stain the stairs the color that I want the floor to be or do I try and match the current color of the floor? What does the "Internet Collective" think?
