Painting Stairs = Leg Workout

Hi friends!

I am crawling out from under the paint mess to say hello!  Back in March, I posted that we were starting a new home improvement project on our stairs.  At this point it has kind of taken over all of our free time!  Each of the last 6 weekends has included work on this project, plus free weekday evenings when time allows.

We’re slowly getting there.  Here’s a photo journey so far:

We have a split staircase – you can go upstairs from the front of the house or from the kitchen area on the back of the house.   The stairway is something that we really loved about this house when we bought it.  But over the years as we’ve remodeled most of the rooms, changed cabinetry to dark wood and refinished the floors to natural, the honey oak finish on the stairs began to look out of place.  We really wanted to have the railings and spindles replaced with new stained wood, wrought iron and treadcaps.  But the cost was absolutely insane.  So this is our budget-friendly Plan B.  Of course once we got into it, we found the condition of the stairs to be pretty bad once the carpet was removed, so it’s turned out to be a lot more prep work than we planned on.

Today I’m starting on the treads.  The vertical facings are finally done (painted white) but now the horizontal pieces will all be painted the espresso color.  This part will be slow-go.  Lots of taping off and tedious detail work.

To tie it in to the theme of FitFeat, I’m getting a LOT of extra BW squats, step-ups and shoulder raises in, that’s for sure! 

Sunday I needed to get away from paint fumes for a bit and it was such a beautiful day, so Cory and I went for a little trail run.  It was the first outdoor run I think I’ve had so far in 2012.  Running just has NOT appealed to me lately, but I have to admit that I did enjoy the trail run – I really enjoy the hills and scenery as opposed to just a usual run on a flat jogging path.  So maybe I’ll pick up more runs here and there along some of the backcountry trails.

Here’s a little guy that crossed the trail in front of us so we had to stop and snap a pic – he’s well camouflaged so you have to look for him!

Thanks a ton for putting up with my sporadic posting schedule right now while this home project takes up all of my spare time.  Starting next month we have a small string of special houseguests coming for visits, so we have to keep at it to get it done and give the paint on the treads the 4 weeks to cure that it requires.

I know a few of my friends/family that read FitFeat are DIY’ers.  Any projects you’ve undertaken that turned out to be a lot more work/time than anticipated?

– Shari B. =)