Busy, Busy, ...Decisions, Decisions!

Been busy these last couple of days. Yesterday I started scraping one of the doors that leads to the outside. It resembled this door when I started:

Now it looks like this (pardon the tools and my mess!):

I was impressed with how clean it came with just my putty knife and my paint scraper. My neighbor has her doors stripped (with white trim) and I really like the look. I am tempted to have just my two doors that lead to the exterior stained similarly to my neighbor's, but have all of my other doors in the house be painted white (as they currently are). What do you think?

You can see below that I have made some progress on the stairs as well. The skirting is scraping clean better than I expected (where the phone line used to be tacked), and I am almost done scraping all of the risers. You can see that I have also been busy filling nail holes on the risers. Maybe I'll sand and prime those tomorrow.

Today I started off my day by applying the glazing finish to the top of my dresser. I really love how this is turning out! When you look at it up close, it almost seems to resemble woodgrain. You can see I still need to apply the glaze to the vertical surfaces:

Once that was done I primed and painted the newel post in Ultra White. All of my home's doors and trim are currently painted a soft ivory color. I want a fresh clean look, so I am planning on repainting ALL of the woodwork in Ultra White. I think the white trim will make my wall colors look more vibrant and fresh. I'll put a second finish coat on the newel post tomorrow.

I will eventually paint the lower portion of the newel post—need to scrape and prime the quarter-round at the carpet, but this would be much easier to do if the carpet wasn't there. So I'm still working out a plan for this—I'm not quite ready to rip up all of my carpet, but might consider ripping up the perimeter and carpet tack strips so that I can scrape my woodwork throughout the room that's currently embedded in the rug.

And lastly, today I scraped paint off my baseboards and removed layers of painted wallpaper from a small wall. I plan on replacing this purple color with the cream color on the walls in the stairwell. My home has plaster walls and I'll have to do a little bit of wall repair before I'll be ready for paint here.

I'm still pretty stoked about finding those balusters yesterday! They had exactly how many I needed in the sizes I needed and I really like the detail in them—and I got them for a heck of a price! I think I'll paint them white. Such a shame to do since they're lightly stained now and would probably look equally nice with a darker stained finish like I want to use (I love woodgrain!), but I think the contrast of having white balusters with stained treads and railing will look nicer.

Guess we'll see what projects tomorrow brings!

The Grand Staircase

I finally began renovating my staircase this week. I ripped up the carpet that was on them a year or so ago and have been putting off painting the woodwork and refinishing the treads. Our woodwork has many layers of paint on it and I have been putting off painting it as I decided how much effort I wanted to put into the project (ie., stripping it or just painting yet another layer on it). I have decided that some woodwork will get more attention than others.

I started with the newel post. It appears that at one time it had been stained and sealed, but when it was painted, it was painted with latex paint (which doesn't adhere well to oil-based finishes), so in many spots the paint came off in large pieces. In fact, I was using my shop vac to clean as I went, and often times the vac could pull the paint up itself. VERY COOL.

I'm going to paint the newel post and the balusters ultra white, but stain the handrail. I'd really like to replace the balusters with turned ones. Got a couple of building salvage places in nearby towns to check out in hopes that I can get used ones for a decent price. I need 30 of them.

Managed to get the newel post stripped in a day. The railing was done the following day. Making good progress!

I have started to focus on scraping my risers. There doesn't seem to be many layers of paint on them, so I'm just evening it out—sanding it down after some scraping—and going to prime over it. I also have a lot of hole filling to do from where I removed nails that held the carpet to the risers.

I am going to refinish the treads myself. I read that it can cost $45-65 A TREAD to hire someone to do them. I'm too cheap for that. I bought an orbital sander and plan on starting that project soon. I want to get my paint scraping done first though. After I've refinished the stairs, I'll assess how badly I want to refinish the other hardwood floors myself. To hire it out would cost about $1-3 a square foot. I am sure I can do it myself, just a matter of how badly do I want to? We'll see...

Prepping the skirting for paint will take me some time to do. There used to be a phone line tacked to the board that was then painted over many times. Consequently, the woodwork looks terrible where the phone line was. This part is going to be tedious! But it will be well worth it.

Also, a couple of the treads have cracks along the grain. I've been doing some research on how to address that issue. It will take some time for me to do, I think. Also, virtually every one of my steps is noisy as can be so I am planning on screwing/countersinking them down to the risers so the wood won't rub on the nails. Lots of prep work to do! I'm looking forward to seeing the finished project!