This week, I wanted to share about a specific element of our house renovation that turned out better than expected! Our stairway!
Before our home renovation project and house flood, we had hardwood floors on the first floor but our stairs and bedrooms on the second floor all had carpets. The upstairs landing area was an engineered hardwood as well.
In addition, on the main floor, we had a “rec room” that had been previously renovated; when we created this workout space, we tried a different stain on the hardwood floor.
In general, the flooring in the house was a hodge podge and nothing was uniform.
Well, the flood took care of all of that.
Yay for new flooring! Boo for our entire housing being ruined and our family being displaced for months.
Since this entire fiasco began with the addition project on the second floor, we had already made decisions about using hardwood in all of those bedroom spaces.
Well, when the flood happened and we had to make decisions about replacing the carpet and engineered hardwood upstairs, we realized we could upgrade and make all of the flooring cohesive. It turned out that carpet was pretty expensive anyway, so the upgrade wasn’t significantly more expensive too.
This ended up being an awesome turn of events. I love having all of the floors continue cohesively through the house. We used prefinished hardwood floors and selected a slightly larger plank than we had originally (which matches our first floor). The 5″ boards leave fewer seams.
Downstairs, we sanded the original floors to remove the water damage and stained. It was going to be nearly impossible to match the stain downstairs to the prefinished hardwood upstairs since the wood types were different, and the wood on the stair treads was a soft pine.
As I pondered this predicament (I knew the slight difference in coloration would ultimately make me crazy), I stumbled upon a solution!
I was sitting in a parking lot in my car one night waiting for my children to finish at an activity, and scrolling through Pinterest, I found a picture of painted black stairs.
I doubted my husband would go for it, but I sent my husband a screenshot of the post anyway.
He didn’t hate it!
Well, that was it. We figured, “If we can’t match everything perfectly with stain, this is a great alternative.”
It hasn’t been that long since the stairs were finished and we returned home, but so far, I’m glad we made this decision.
Many people I shared the idea with said that the black might show more dust, shoe prints, etc. and that the paint could chip. All of that might happen yet, but it has been almost two months and I’m still content with the outcome.
The dust and cat fur vacuum up easily enough, and I have my kids wipe down the stairs when we mop.
I’m dreaming about lining the stairway wall with photos – maybe a good winter project?
Let me know what you think and if you’d ever paint your stairs in the comments below.
