Two years ago our hallway was – what we can only describe as – brown. As you have already seen, we have painted everything white, restored the front door and replaced the missing stained glass panel. We have also started restoring the staircase, handrail and balustrades. This was the upstairs landing when we viewed the house.
The first task was to remove the boards that were covering up the original balusters. (We removed the awful carpet in the hallway, too)
Although we are painting all of the woodwork throughout the house, the existing paintwork on the balusters was in an awful state, so that we couldn’t just paint over it.
The paint was chipped and some of the board that had been covering the balusters had stuck to the paintwork. We started stripping away the paint with a heat gun.
This took for ever, as the paint was really gooey and got stuck in the decorative moulding. Then after hours of stripping paint, came hours of sanding everything. After about 40 hours if work, this is what it looked like.
The handrail originally had a brown stain (that you can still see on the newel post), which we completely sanded away so that it wouldn’t affect the colour of the new stain. To remove every last bit of dust, I wiped the surface with white spirit and let it dry. The general plan is to paint all vertical surfaces white and stain all horizontal surfaces a deep rich brown. After trying a few different stain colours and eventually decided on a rich mahogany colour. The first coat of stain left the wood looking more purple than brown, but after the second coat it darkened considerably and looked more like I’d expected.
I used an old cotton rug to apply the stain, but made a fatal mistake…
… I didn’t wear gloves. Other than that, the stain was really easy to apply and gave a very even finish. To finish off, I covered the handrail with two coats of wax and gave the whole area a really good polish. We used clear wax, but it still darkened the colour of the stain slightly.
The finish is amazing. It’s so smooth and shiny – we can’t stop touching it! You can see that we have also started painting the balusters, but we are still a very long way of completely finishing the whole staircase. As always, we will keep you updated on our progress.
Hi Christine,
Love the website, so many inspiring projects, and it’s great to get advice on tips, tricks and pitfalls be aware about.
I’m in the process of tackling the stairs in our 1930’s semi and have a quick question about staining the handrail… I think I can see from the pictures you stained the underside of the handrail. Did you mask of the balusters when applying the stain or will the paint cover any stain which you might inadvertently get on the balusters?
Cheers
Jim
Thanks, Jim! Yes, we stained the underside of the handrail. We masked the balusters to avoid getting the stain on them but inevitably there were a few smudges and stains where there shouldn’t have been. I wouldn’t worry about it too much as the stain was easy to paint over (it took a few extra coats though). As always I’d recommend trying on one baluster first just to make sure that your paint covers the stain, too!
Cx
Thanks Christine,
I’ll let you know how I get on (and I’ll remember gloves!) . Mind you, I’ve still got some of the stripping and all of the sanding to look forward to, so it might be a while before I get to stain anything!
Cheers,
Jim x
I know this post is from awhile ago but I was wondering if you could tell me what makes of strain and wax you used? This is just the look we are going for, it looks great!
Thanks for the compliment, Jenny! The stain we used is Fiddes Non Grain Raising Stain in mahogany (I think we applied 2 coats). We were really happy with the stain and it was really easy to apply. The wax is just a standard wax that we picked up at our local timber yard.
Good luck!
Cx