Bye, Mommies… Hello, Good-Looking Stairway!

After staying with us for two very fun and productive weeks, mommies is on her way back home to Iowa. We miss her already!!

It was awesome having her here. Besides working on the house, we did some fun things like playing putt-putt golf at the historical Peter Pan Mini-Golf! Unfortunately, mom whipped both me and Nick. She’s good, but her dad was a professional golfer… so she had an unfair advantage.

We’ll also miss her little tiny yorkshire terrier, Billa (I call him Billy because… he’s a boy). I’m not sure if our cats will miss him, though.

This house is looking better already! I’ve got several completed projects to share with you over the next few days.

Today – let’s finish up the mini stairway makeover! We painted the (tall) walls of the stairway and put up a new light. Then it was time to paint that stairway rail a nice black.

First, we mom primed the rail. Next time, we’ll use tinted primer. But this turned out pretty good in the end.

She painted on several coats (I think three?) of black – the same black that we used for our bathroom makeover. If we had used tinted primer, it probably would have needed only two coats. Then mom poly’d that sucker with water-based poly. Sounds pretty simple, but the process took several days because we had to let things dry, sand, paint, dry, sand, paint, dry, sand, paint.

After the final coat of poly, we let it rest and dry for 24 hours and finally put it in just this morning!

Nick put in the brackets back into the wall and then we used construction adhesive for the ends of the rail. And then we were done!!

Before:

After:

Love it.It’s hard to see the gray paint here, but it’s gray and pretty in real life. (And the green tape was applied to help the glue “stick” – but it wasn’t necessary in the end)

But its not done! That carpet needs to go. We need to collect lots and lots of black frames for a huge photo gallery. And I’m starting to think about adding moulding on the wall… please talk me out of it. Thanks in advance.