Contrary to popular belief, we have been getting some DIY finished round these parts.  It’s just been difficult actually getting the pictures uploaded and posted on blog.  Ya know how life is.

At the end of this week, Rick’s family are coming for a visit.  They’re driving about 18 hours from Oklahoma to see us – it’s been about 4 years since we’ve seen them so it will be really nice to catch up.  His folks are bringing his five year old niece, Keegan (pictured here with her 18 month old cousin, Alyssa)…

So the fact that we haven’t got any railing on our main stairs is a bit of a problem. A safety hazard, to say the least. So with a definite deadline to meet, we’ve been spurred on to get the stairs finally finished.  After all, we’ve only been living without rails since last summer . You can track our progress here: stair sanding, new library header, the tread problem and finally, stair staining.

First up?  Before we can install any spindles and railing, we have to solve the base plate issue (read about that here). Rick has been working hard building custom landing plates. Custom because DIY stores don’t carry landing plates in the dimensions we need – 16 ft long by 10 inches wide, plus a little rounded overhang to make it all look pretty.  See exhibit A.

So we glued 1 x 10 to a 1 x 1, and routered then edge to create a bull-nosed finished (see Exhibits B, C and D). A little bit of sanding and screwing and we now have custom landing plates. Voila!

See those brown swirls on the edge of the steps?  We removed the wooden decorative spirals that were stuck there.  Nothing wrong with ‘em, just not our style.  So, those swirls will eventually be painted over for a more seamless look.

Next up? Drilling the holes for the spindles and staining the rest of the plates.  Deets coming soon – stay tuned!

So now we have moved our DVD and electronics to the newly-named “DVD nook”

we had to move the DVD case we had originally (but temporarily) hung in this location.  Check out this old photo from before we had painted the walls and removed the brown trim…

The question was – where do we move it to?  We spend 95% of the time watching TV in the living room (the smaller TV has been moved to the game room – more on that later).  Plus, seeing as we play DVD’s through the PS3 (rather than a dedicated DVD player) and the PS3 lives in the DVD nook with the other electronics, we needed to keep the DVD storage somewhere close.  Somewhere in the living room.  Makes sense – it’s not neuroscience, you say. Yes, but there was no obvious place to hang this rather large DVD case (what can I say, we have a lot of DVD’s).  One of the great things about open plan living rooms is all the space.  One of the drawbacks about open plan living rooms … is all the space.  As in, very few walls to hang stuff.

You can see the floorplan of our first floor below.  The stairs divides the two open-plan living rooms.  The living room on the right is where we spend our time watching TV. The sofa goes along the entryway wall, the adjacent wall has windows, the fireplace is at an angle leading to the doorway to the dining room.  Hmmm.

Then it came to me.  Let’s use some of the unused storage space … under the stairs.  Lemme explain…

We have this nice staircase in the middle of our entry way (that separates the two living rooms downstairs).  At the top, one staircase goes to the master suite (to the right), the other stairs lead to the other bedrooms/games/laundry. We therefore have a very long walk-in closet under the stairs and I figured we could maximize some of this space for the DVD cases.  Yep, we have two (although we only originally hung one of them).

After a little measuring and some drywall removal, we are able to recess the media cabinets into the wall…

We didn’t lose too much space in the walk-in closet behind.  The DVD cabinets are only slightly wider than the width of the wall, so we still have plenty of storage space.

Here’s a pic of both storage cabinets, one either side of the stairs (please ignore the half completed stair railing and stain job we started before Christmas)

So far, these media cabinets are in the perfect location.  Near enough to be near the TV when we want to watch a movie, but stashed away enough and not taking up any floor or cabinet space.  All in all, we’re starting to get this place looking the way we want it.  I think the biggest makeover will come when we remove the last of the old wood floor an install darker hardwoods to match the stairs.  Lush.  Can’t wait.

At the top of our stairs, we have this big expanse of wall that crying out for something to be put there.

Any large piece of art work would be uber-expensive to fit this space.  So we came up with a cheaper, alternative. A DIY mirror.

We got a large 3ft x  7ft mirror for free off Craigslist – it was one of those builders-basic frameless mirrors that go above the vanity. All it took was a little mirror adhesive and some painted trim around the edges, and voila! A custom, large scale mirror that costs about 20 bucks.

It does wonders for reflecting the light around the foyer during the daytime, not to mention the pretty chandelier crystals at night.  Gotta love inexpensive solutions to design problems.  What inexpensive ways for art work have you utilized in your home?

Pssst. Did you notice those DVD storage cabinets to the side of the stairs? I’ll be posting about those on Friday.  Stay tuned….

Back in the summer, you may recall that Rick took it upon himself to dismantle the railing and sand the stairs.  You don’t remember?  Ok, here’s a (dusty) pic…

The plan was to remove the orangey pine color we inherited with the house with a richer, darker color.  He even tried a few stains out so I could see (I was in the UK at the time):

Fast forward a few months, it was finally time to try and get something done with our rail-less, spindle-less and stainless stairs. First thing we had to do was fill in the small holes left by the wooden spindles once they were removed:

All we had to do was cut small pieces of 3/4″ dowel rod and put them into the hole with a little wood glue.  We let the glue cure for about 48 hours, then sanded the steps to a smooth finish (sorry, no pics of this part of the process.  I did take some but someone who shall renamed nameless *coughRickcough* accidentally deleted them off my computer).  Anyhoo.

Then the staining begun.  You can see from the decor we did this right before Christmas

In this photo, you can see the filled-in spindle holes on each tread…

It won’t matter that they are a little darker than the rest of the stair tread.  The new wrought-iron spindles will be drilled in close proximity to these holes and each one will be capped off with ones of these thingymebobs…

Whaddya think? I’m loving the new darker stair treads.  They still need a light sanding and a second coat of stain, followed by some polyurethane so make them nice and glossy.  We haven’t 100% decided what to do with the stair risers yet – whether to keep them white, stain them the same walnut color, or even apply a subtle tile to them. What are your favorite treatments for stair risers? Do you have any inspiration pics you can share?

Rick is making fantastic progress sanding the stairs, gradually removing the old pine color from the treads and railing (eventually we’ll be replacing it with a darker stain).  It’s been a huge job to tackle on his own.  But given the amount of dust that this project has generated, maybe it is best that I have been away for this part (we don’t want a replay of the asthma attack following the carpet removal when we first moved in).

Here are a few pics taken by Rick to document the progress he is making.  The one dark stair tread was a test run on a replacement stain color. Check out those doggy footprints in the dust!

In this pic, Rick has totally removed the stair railing and all the spindles in order to finish the sanding.  It looks so open and airy without stair railing – it’s a shame it’s such a death trap!

I love that there is so much dust in the air that even the camera has little specks of dust in the lens.

You can really see the difference between the sanded stair treads and the original orangey color of the floor.  I think that using a rich chocolate brown on the stairs will add depth and sophistication, and hopefully the “wow-factor”, to the entryway.

The next decision we have to make is what to do with the stair risers.  Keep them white as a nice contrast to the darker stain on the treads?  Or stain them for a cohesive look?  Or do something daring such as paint them a different color, add wallpaper, or even tiles?  What do you think?

I love my husband.  Insert gratuitous picture here:

Wishy woo. I married him because of his body mind DIY abilities.  My grandmother constantly reminds me how lucky I am because he saves me so much money.  You know, in gigolo fees.  Oh yeah, and not having to hire a plumber, electrician, or general contactor during our house makeover. What can I say? He is multi-talented.

When I left to visit my family in the UK for 9 weeks, I left him a to-do list, written on some old whiteboard we had hanging around from my PhD days:

Ok, I didn’t expect him to do ALL of this stuff.  Just most some of it.  I thought of the list as a good way to focus his attention on specific projects around the house.  You see, I know my husband.  Over the past 10 years of being together, I think we both have a pretty good handle on each other’s great and not-so-great characteristics.  Rick tends to have a little bit of “need-a-bit-of-get-up-and-go-itis” (aka “my-get-up-and-go-has-got-up-and-gone”), coupled with a smidge of DIY Attention Deficit Disorder (A.D.D.).  I wasn’t too concerned about the former – Rick usually likes to keep really busy while I’m away as it makes the time go faster. I was a little worried about the DIY A.D.D.  In the past, he has had a tendency to start new projects… and there are many around our house … rather than finishing old ones.  Seeing as we outlined our renovation goals for 2010, I thought it would be useful to focus his more-than-capable DIY skills on these projects, rather than starting a new one.

It was a great idea. In theory. 

Two days after arriving in the UK, he informed me that he was working on a surprise project.  I need to mention for anyone that doesn’t know us as a couple, typically I am the pragmatist and Rick is the creative dreamer.  So a new project can range anywhere from “surprise, I installed a new faucet!”  to  ”surprise, I ripped down the garage and am building a new 3 story extension!”.

So, needless to say the surprise project was  not on the previously mentioned to-do list.  After a few days of working on said project, he finally let me in on the secret.

Yep, he’s sanding and restaining our stairs! The orangey pine-ish (that’s a word, right?) color is being replaced with a lovely deep chocolate walnut-ish color.  And eventually those white wooden spindles will be replaced with wrought iron ones.

So far, he’s done most of the sanding and has stained the rails…

I think it’s going to look fantastic! When it is finished. So, I guess we’ve just added another project to our 2010 to-do list

One of the features that caught my eye when we were looking at buying this house was the stairs in the entry way:

It reminded me of the stairs in the movie Titanic (of course, no where near the scale and grandness of the luxury liner).  The central staircase dividing off in two directions had me at hello (in case you’re wondering, the stairs to the right go to the master suite, the stairs on the left head down the hallway, past the bedroom-turned library, the two spare bedrooms and on to the game room).

One day this week, I was wasting time working hard on the Internet and I came across some pretty cool stairs. How would you like to walk up and down these?

Or these?

Or these?

I think all three stairs are sooo to cool look at, but I imagine I would fall down them pretty quickly!  One way to remedy falling down?  Include a slide!

I think these would work great doubling as a work out tool.  Imagine running up those steps again and again so you can slide back down them.  Fun!  And talking of combining stairs with recreation, I am in L.O.V.E. with these bookcase stairs:

I am seriously tempted to do something like this with the stairs leading to our attic (which will *eventually* be turned into a bedroom suite). Don’t have an attic?  How about these cool stairs leading to a basement.  Think of the storage capabilities!

So, there you have it.  Some stairway design inspiration. Drool at will.

(Sources: Image 1, Image 2, Image 3, Image 4, Image 5, Image 6)