After countless months of staircase restoration work and almost endless updates, the day has finally arrived! We’ve finished!
Can’t believe it? Well neither can we, but our staircase restoration project is finally complete. Bet you never thought we’d say that!
I still can’t stop jumping up and down and running into the hallway to stare at our finished staircase, so please excuse us if there are even more spelling mistakes than usual (typing and jumping at the same time is surprisingly difficult!).
I’m sure you’d like to know all of the nitty-gritty details, so hold on and make sure you don’t slip on any wet paint! This may take a while…
Let’s start right back at the beginning.
This is what our staircase looked like when we moved in.
Not a pretty sight, is it? The spindles were boarded up and everything had been painted so many times, that most of the detail in the wood carvings had been lost – not to mention our whole hallway being brown and green.
One day just a few weeks after moving in, the brown started to get me so down, that in a complete fit I painted everything white to brighten the place up.
It only took a few hours and makes such an amazing difference, but when Jan came home from work the day I finished painting he didn’t notice a difference! Can you believe it?! Eventually, everything will still need skimming but for now, it will have to do.
Okay, so the walls may look slightly better, but the rest is still awful. The carpet really wasn’t to our taste and I even fell down the stairs twice just because it was so worn and slippery.
There were chips all over the painted wood and everything was really dirty and had started to turn yellow.
After removing the boards and lots of hours of stripping and sanding, things actually looked worse than before!
I’m not sure what kind of paint had been used for the spindles, but it kept going really sticky when trying to strip it with the heat gun. It went everywhere and was a complete pain to remove.
If you’re planning on stripping any paint, especially in an older home, it’s always important to carry out a test to check if you have any lead paint!
If we’d thought that the stripping had taken a long time, we really weren’t prepared for the amount of time it would take for the sanding.
You can catch up on the details of lots more sanding, stripping and a lot of painting in our previous posts which we’ll be linking to at the end of this post.
But now for the moment, you’ve all been waiting for!
Drum roll, please… here it is – our finished staircase!
Although the steps are stained a very dark brown mahogany colour, the hallway is much brighter.
Everything is so much cleaner and neater.
We’re really happy with how the panelling turned out, too.
We love the contrast between the dark steps and white risers.
The handrail is stained the same as the steps, but we’ve waxed it instead of varnishing it.
The hallway floors, especially the upstairs one, both still need sorting. At the moment we’re planning on sanding the original floorboards.
Considering the state our staircase was in when we started the restoration, we’re amazed that it has turned out so well.
As it’s taken us a ridiculous amount of time to complete this job, here are a few stats just to show how involved this project actually was.
250 hours of stripping and sanding
13 Splinters
9 Burns
3 Eye rinses (yes, we did wear protective goggles)
Countless scratches and cuts
3.5 l of paint
24 hours painting, staining and varnishing
1 roll of masking tape
Lots of swearing
1 fall down the stairs (not quite sure how that happened…)
As always here are our side by side before and after shots.
Isn’t it amazing what a difference bit of hard work and paint can make?
The spindles are so much better now!
Everything took such a long time to strip, sand and paint, but looking back at what it used to be like it was so worth it!
The whole hallway feels completely different!
We’re so happy it’s finally completed! We’re still planning to have a runner installed, but haven’t been able to decide which carpet to go for. You can read about our carpet options here.
If you’d like to catch up on all the previous steps of our staircase restoration in more detail you can check them out here:
Staining, Painting & Varnishing
Part 2 – Replacing Missing Spindles
Part 6 – Attaching Our Panelling
More importantly, you can read about how all of the other lovely Duelling DIY ladies are getting on here:
Sandra @ The House of Bing
Have you ever started a project that seemed to take for ever to complete? Have you ever restored a staircase? What do you think of our restoration? Was all of the work worth it? Let us know which carpet we should go for!
I can totally relate to this project! We have refinished the stringers and the spindles.
Originally, we were going to refinish the pine, but it is in rough shape. Then we were going to fully carpet the stairs, but I am worried about things like pet accidents and other things. In the process of painting our stairs, and it gives me hope to see your finished project!
It was such hard work but it was soooo worth it! We did eventually add a runner (which had always been the plan) and absolutely loved the squishiness it added. It also made the staircase less slippy. Maybe that would be an option for you, too? You can see our runner here.
It sounds like your staircase is going to look fab – we’d love to see a picture when you’ve finished!
Cx
I am just about ready to tackle my staircase. I have a 1903 large Victorian in a St. Louis suburb. Overall, the house was in great shape. But the 80’s dark green carpet on the stairs..urgh! I have to have back surgery, so I’m debating whether to tackle before or after. But I’m going to stain the entire staircase and handrails/ballisters, then runner down the center. I got some spray-on stripper that Lowes highly recommended. I also have a detail sander, and lots of sanding sponges. Any other tips?
One side question: Did your house have any dips or drops in the flooring? I have dips in my upstairs…some quite pronounced, and I’m not quite sure what to do with those…especially wanting to put hardwood in the rooms.
We’re so happy with how our staircase turned out but it is a project that takes a long time (probably longer than you expect) so it’s definitely worth making sure you have enough time to complete it – there’s nothing worse than staring at half-finished projects and not being able to do anything about them!
I’d definitely recommend checking if you have lead paint (you can buy test kits at most DIY stores) before you start to strip any paint – safety first! It’s a job that will seem to take forever so just keep reminding yourself that it’ll be worth it in the end!
We didn’t have any big dips in our home (we have a few larger ones now) but as long as they don’t bother you too much I think it’s part of the charm of living in an older property. If you do want to remove them you will have to take up the existing floor and adjust the beams beneath by adding strips of timber to level out the structure before adding a new floor on top.
Hope that helps & keeping my fingers crossed that your surgery goes well!
Cx
Well done! I know that you suffered through that but the results are so well worth it.
Thanks, Vanessa! We’re so pleased with how it turned out, too!
Cx
Such a lovely restoration
I have moved into a house and uncovered exactly the same stair spindles, the bottom stairs are perfect but l need to renew all the top floor.
I have searched the internet.
Have you any ideas where l can purchase the same spindles..
Please help
It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to find the exact same spindles but there is still an easy solution! We had our original mouldings reproduced and I’d suggest the same for your spindles. We wrote a post about it which you can read here but basically, we took some of our moulding to a joinery, they made a cutter (which cost around £75) and then made all of our new moulding which matches the original perfectly. The per metre price was about the same as purchasing it from a DIY store and the only additional cost was the cutter.
Hope that helps!
Cx