Wednesday, June 10, 2015

A Step Up: Going from Blah to Beautiful

For years, I've been wanting to do one particular project around my house. It was big and daunting and there was no coming back so we kept putting it off. But this spring we finally took the plunge and I can honestly say, I think the results are pretty spectacular. I have had several clients over the years who I've thought might want to do this same project, but I couldn't recommend it in good faith until I'd tried it myself.

When we moved in nearly 12 years ago, we decided to forgo the traditional carpet runner on the front steps to have a clean, classic look. This staircase would hardly ever get used so I didn't feel that we needed a carpet to protect the steps or provide traction for shoeless kids. But mostly I just thought I'd tire of whatever we chose. (We have another set of steps that leads to the kitchen and knew that those would be used almost exclusively.)

But over time, as with most home decor -- our taste changed. I no longer loved the heavy oak look. I've been slowly adding black to nearly every room in the house and thought black stair treads paired with the existing white risers would be perfect for us.

My husband is super handy and has done many difficult projects around the house including installing a coffered ceiling and a mack daddy treehouse, but this time we needed to bring in the professionals. I'll let the pictures do the talking. Let me know what you think.



Before:

Pretty traditional curved oak staircase.We added the chair rail 10 years ago, but thought that looked really plain too.




Another before view



My contractors came and couldn't have been more diligent or responsible. This is a pretty messy job because all the steps and handrails need to be sanded down to raw wood. They hung plastic sheeting all around the house to block off any blowing dust. The tools are noisy, but I'm hardly home during the day so that wasn't too disruptive. I loved that they vacuumed and packed up all the tools at the end of each day and the job was done in less than a week.

Choosing what finish to put on the steps proved to be one of the bigger decisions. My contractor brought in the regional rep from a nearby paint store and we talked at length about stain versus paint and which product to use. I felt strongly that I wanted the finish to be black and be durable. I wanted some sheen, but didn't really need it to be super shiny. We chose a product called Interlok by McCormick Paints. It's a premium acrylic urethane DTM coating that dries to a super-hard finish. Plus it cleans up with soap and water. We had it tinted black. The contractor tried out samples for us -- we only needed to decide semi-gloss or high-gloss. 



We chose the black high gloss which is on the lower step. It's perfect.




And here's what the finished product looks like as modeled by Scout, the Wonderdog.

I think the final result is super chic and clean. We added the window box moldings and are so happy with the result. Coordinating dog at no extra charge.






I love how the teal accents pop off the black and white contrast.

It's really fun to see a long-term vision finally come to life. 



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