Step by Step
Whoa! When we walked into our potential new farmhouse the first thing I noticed was the hideous blue carpet on the staircase just inside the front door. My initial thought was, let's just turn around and leave. However, we continued our tour and decided this was the farmhouse for us!
The stairs were definitely at the top of our remodel list. This is one of those projects that we planned to happen one way but ended up the complete opposite of what we planned. I had initially planned to rip up the carpets, sand the steps, and re-stain them to match the hardwoods. Easy, breezy, "we will be done in a weekend"... NOPE!
Once we pulled up the carpet we realized the steps weren't in great condition. Actually what we found were steps that were made from 2 or 3 pieces of wood instead of one solid piece. So back to the drawing board I went. After a little bit of thought I decided we should just paint them. I had already planned to paint the flooring in the room at the top of the stairs so this was the next best option.
This project ended up being very simple BUT time consuming. So if you are planning to paint your stairs, I would count on it being a 2 to 3 weekend project unless your steps are in great condition.
Step By Step... Here's what we did
- First we removed the carpet including the pad, carpet strips, and a few hundred staples.
- Next we sanded the steps lightly with a standard 125 grit sandpaper to smooth out any splinters from removing the nails and staples
- Then we cleaned the steps to get rid of dust and debris so we could fill in the cracks with wood filler
- Next we filled in all the cracks and covered the seams with Plastic Wood and then sanded to create steps with a smooth finish. This wood filler worked great and has held up perfectly for us.
After the prep work was done which took us 1 weekend to complete, it was time to paint.
- First we painted the stairs the base coat color. We applied 3 coats to create a good solid base. We used a Floor & Porch Enamel Paint from Sherwin Williams in the color Passive Gray
We also freshened up the banister by painting it black.
- After the base coat was thoroughly dry we taped off our runner design. We used a high quality painters tape and made sure the edges were firmly pressed down to minimize bleeding from the top coat.
- Next we used the Floor & Porch Enamel paint from Sherwin Williams in the color Grizzle Gray to complete our runner design. We applied 3 coats of paint since this would be a high traffic area.
Design Tip: Make sure you remove the painters tape before your paint has completely dried. This keeps the paint from peeling up with the tape.
- Once the tape was up we did have to go back and correct a few spots where the darker paint had bled under the painters tape. We used a small art paint brush so we could create crisp straight lines.
- After the steps had dried we chose to add a protective top coat. We used Minwax Polycrylic Protective finish because it did not add any yellow coloring to the floor.
In the end the steps turned out to be one of my favorite projects we have done. So sometimes you have to stop, reevaluate and then move on! They add so much character to the entrance of our Farmhouse and if you are thinking about paint your steps... I say go for it! Thanks for stopping by the blog. If you have any additional questions just leave a comment below.
-Wesley
