We're giving away a bag made from recycled sails from our etsy shop this week. Don't forget to enter!
I've wanted to paint our basement stairs since the day we moved in. I'm not a fan of the shade of dark brown they were painted (I OD'd on brown in a rented apartment a few years ago), although we do appreciate that someone was trying to make them match the hardwood floors in the rest of the house. Plus, we're pretty happy they aren't covered with the red and gold carpet that we've spotted a few remnants of peeking out from under the wall in one spot.
Carpet or not, the dark color sucks all the light out of the stairwell so it's practically a miracle that neither of us has fallen down the stairs yet. But when every other room in the house is in desperate need of paint, basement stairs don't really get top priority. And then there's the whole logistical issue; how does one paint the stairs to the basement when all the food is in the basement pantry? So we lived with very dark brown stairs for a year.
On Sunday I had two logistical hurdles working in my favor: S wasn't home so it was just me running up and down the stairs 20 times a day; and the new basement door that we installed last month means I could exit the basement, shut the door from the outside, and go back inside upstairs through the front door. Yep, the old door was held shut with a big metal bar on the inside. No working knob, no latch, no deadbolt, nothing.
As much as I wanted to change the color of the stairs, I also didn't want to spend any money in the process. Afterall, we are gearing up to spend some cash on a basement bathroom someday soon. We've got a big stash of paint, so for the first coat I used a water based primer that the previous owners had left behind (and I threw away eight cans of gooped up primer and colors we're never going to use again).
With the Feens safely on the other side of the dog gate I got to work putting a quick coat of primer on the dark steps and risers. It was kind of like torture for him not to be glued to my side, or maybe the torture was from listening to me belt out songs while listening to Pandora. We'll put being able to unabashedly sing Lady Gaga and Sinatra at the top of my lungs as another check in the plus box of having S away for the day.
One quick coat of primer made a huge difference in the light situation, even with the lights off. I was tempted to paint the stairs white for a second, deciding otherwise when I realized I'd have to touch up white paint way too often.
While the primer dried I dug through the rest of the paint stash and discovered that we still had silver-gray floor paint from the very first night at the beehive when S's dad and I readied the basement for an onslaught of our stuff. I painted a swatch on one of the almost-dry bottom steps and dug through the rest of the paint looking for a contrast color for the risers. I thought I wanted to use the same Benjamin Moore Silver Half Dollar that looks more bluish than gray behind the spice shelves at the top of the stairs, but next to the silver-gray floor paint, it just looked like a slightly different shade of gray. Almost like I'd run out of paint or made a mistake. Not really the contrast I was going for. So I pulled out the ultra bright white trim paint that I used around the sun room/ office windows last summer. Perfect. It's really hard to go wrong with bright white.
I painted all the risers white with my favorite 2" short cutting-in brush, and then moved on to floor gray on the steps. My go-out-the-basement-door plan was working just fine until I slammed my finger in the door on the way out the door. I boycott the door for the rest of the day and decided to leave a bare spot on every other step so I could go up and down the stairs inside. Pretty good tip that I wish I'd thought of before; if I had, I bet we would have painted the stairs a looong time ago.
Another good tip for painting trim along carpeted floors is to use a long drywall knife to create a barrier between the carpet and trim, or riser. Just make sure you wipe the extra paint off with a rag before you put the knife back on the floor. I'll let you know how the can of carpet cleaner works....
I did a second coat of white on the risers (make sure you don't bump your knee into them when you go back to paint the treads like I did. Twice.) Then to take advantage of the extra-long drying time overnight, I painted every single tread for the second coat of silver and faced my fear of the door at the end of the night.
In the morning I put a second coat on the few treads that I had left bare the day before and called this project a success, despite the blood blister on my finger and the white paint on the knees of my pants.
Now I want to paint the railing white. And I'd like to sew some kind of curtain to cover the spice rack, but one that won't knock all the spice jars down when it's opened. Any ideas? How is it that one successful project always leads to another? I feel like it's a recurring theme around here.Labels: basement, inside, painting, stairs
