Ode to My Staircase.

Howdy!  Judy writing again today.  Poor Tera has sick children and just hasn't been able to get on and write.  Hope you aren't tired of me.


I bought a house in 2003 after a divorce in an attempt to help my kids start over without all their memories blasting them every day at home.  I let them pick the house, and I ended up with a 4 bedroom 2 story, built in 1960 and added on to (the upstairs and huge den) in 1966.  At that same time they added a BOMB SHELTER.  Over the bomb shelter the man built a workshop; which I have turned into a library/office. 


One distinctive thing about the house was the maroon/red carpet, which was old but very, very thick, soft and cushy.  It also hid a ton of living.  With 3 teenage boys, I needed that.  Even though I am NOT a red person and hated the carpet, I never spend money unless I have to, so I decided to live with the majority of the carpet until such time as it showed wear.  I had some removed in the formal dining room and uncovered gorgeous original wood floors, which I had rejuvenated by a super guy who rented from me (that was before I started doing that myself, I was teaching school then).  I loved it so much I had him pull the carpet up in the small living room, but oops, found plywood, not original wood floors.  So I shopped and found the closest thing I could to the original in the dining room and had it put down.  I left the red carpet in 3 of the 4 bedrooms (later changing one to blue) and the large den and hallway and staircase.  Boy that red carpet held up so well on that staircase, all the running up and down those boys did, and then 5 grandsons and 1 granddaughter came and it still held up. 


Red carpet in den, probably 25 years old.

See how the carpet was rolled over the sidewall

Previous picture had grandson and this is granddaughter looking at  me back in the day when she played with her baby toys. 

I remarried in 2005 and my new husband believe it or not had the same carpet in his house, and he was sick and tired of red carpet, and for the next 9 years he talked a lot about changing that carpet.  So finally in October, 2014, I did get new textured carpet in the large den and the staircase, after we pulled down the popcorn and retextured the ceiling and the wall of the staircase and covered a brick wall with sheetrock.  The den really looks larger and brighter now with the gray carpet. 

 

This is the newer wood I had put down to match original in dining room.
 

The staircase presented a real problem though.  I've never seen this before, but the carpet on the stairs wrapped around the edge of the stairs onto the sides of the wood trim.  When the carpet guys pulled the red carpet off they didn't roll it but left the stained, beat up sides with lots and lots of staples left in it.  It was a mess.  But I was busy with other things, and left it like that for a year.  When I returned from San Antonio and flipping a house in Converse, a suburb of San Antonio, in October, 2015, I decided it was time to fix the sides of the staircase.

The first thing I had to do was remove all the staples, which still had some of the carpet under them.  When I pulled the staples out, chunks of the wood came with it, so then I had a beat up sidewall besides staple holes.

  So I got some wood filler and coated the sidewall and left it to dry all night. The next day I sanded lightly with my palm sander the sidewall to make the surface even.  Smoother but still butt ugly.

Please note that I do cover carpet where I'm working with drop cloths.
 

 I could tell the worse parts on edges would always show, so I went to Home Depot and bought some wood trim we sometimes use for shims, and with a hand saw and my miter box on the kitchen counter, and my measuring tape, I started measuring and cutting the trim to wrap the edge of the sidewall from where the carpet ended.  Zig zag, zig zag was the pattern.  I used my nailgun to fasten the trim to the sidewall.

After I finished the trim, I then got out my trusty can of semi gloss white paint and painted the trim (which was already primed) and the sidewall.  In the end I put on 3 coats because all those wood chunks, filled, and bumps in the wood itself took a lot of paint to cover.

After I got my new white sidewall, it still lacked something; so I went to Michaels and found some wood medallion pieces.  I glued those on with gorilla glue and painted them white too, and I really, really like the sidewall now.  It has a Victorian flare to it.  I've had a lot of compliments. 

Now that I've lived with it for 11 months, I feel that the spindles on the railing need to be painted white too, but I dread doing that with the new carpet there.  Plus I'd want to leave the handrail top and the big post the shiny MinWax stain; but that may look weird, but it ties it into the 1960's brown paneling in the large den with the big Spanish door.  Yes, one day that will be my next project, but believe it or not my hubby loves wood paneling. 


Most women never think about adding wood trim to things to dress it up and if they do they think they need a man.  LADIES, it is easy to use a hand saw and cut through thin trim pieces, and with a miter box with has slots for the angle where sides meet which costs about $8, it really is easy.  If you are wondering what I mean by miter cut, look over your interior doorway trim and see where the top and sides meet at the top, and you'll see the wood cut in a 45 degree slant.  That's a miter cut. 


So if you think I should paint the spindles, let me know.  If you think NOT, let me know that too.  Sometimes I think the stain is rich, but other times I think how it would look more "today" if they were white.