Stair Makeover

Each winter, we try to tackle a few indoor projects.  Since the yard is taken out of the equation with all of the snow and cold weather, it's a good time to shift our focus to the inside.  This winter, our big project was to work on the stairs and subsequent hallway.

Our stairs are somewhat steep and, with no runner or treads, can be slippery and dangerous.  Dan found this out the hard way!  We had a railing installed a few months after we moved in, but the stairs were still a little bit unsafe.  We thought about what the best option would be and decided to have a runner installed.  Before we started pricing them out, though, we knew we wanted to refresh the stair fronts, the trim going up the stairs, and also to paint the walls.  My motto in this house has been to paint everything white.  We (and by we I most definitely mean Dan) have painted doors, baseboards, and crown molding white.  It just makes everything look so fresh and clean. 

In January, the hubby set to work on the stairs so that we could get the runner installed sometime in February.  Again, I'm really bad at taking before shots, but just know that anything that's now white here was once wood.  I couldn't believe how different the stairs looked just by painting the fronts white.  It really made them pop.

For the walls, we simply wanted to continue with the same Benjamin Moore Shaker Beige color we had in the living room.  While the original color was similar, it needed to be freshened up, and if you know me, it needed to match exactly.
Painting the hallway was a feat in itself.  Armed with a long paint roller and his dexterity, Dan was able to get it done in a few hours.

 

Now that Phase 1 was complete, we could move on to Phase 2: picking out the runner.  On a whim, we stopped by a local carpet store on the way home from grocery shopping one day.  I'm actually pretty easy when it comes to making big decisions for the house.  Sure, it'll take me days to decorate the mantel, but give me some carpet samples, and I'll have one picked out in a few minutes.

We started looking at the "fancier" runners.  Who knew they were so expensive?  The first quote was around $900 for materials and installation.  No way.  We were on a budget and this was almost double what we had planned.  Eventually we made our way to the cheaper remnant section.  Now we were in business.  I wasn't looking for anything special, just something neutral, but dark enough to hide any imperfections.  There were two options that we really liked and we ended up going with the cheaper version, not necessarily because it was cheaper, but because we liked it better.  

A few days later, a representative from the store came out to measure the stairs.  A week later, he came back to install the runner.  He was in and out in an hour.  We also had him cut a 5x7 rug with the leftover material.  We put that in our upstairs "closet room".  

Dan had stayed home that day to supervise, so that afternoon when I came home from work, I was like a kid in a candy store (or in my case a Home Goods).  I couldn't wait to see it.  The stairs looked so cozy now and really fit in with our whole cottage style decor.  More importantly, though, they were safer!

The next step in this project is to continue the paint color into the upstairs hallway.  Although now that the weather is getting nicer, we may have to wait until next winter.

Be well,