i believe ... in miracles
a miracle has happened friends. yes. in our very home. some thought it might never happen (some might = me, some might also = Chrissy, Hazel claims she always believed but i have my doubts). i hope you are sitting down to read this, since i know so many people read blogs standing up like me. this past Saturday afternoon/evening our disbelief, and maybe yours, was proved unfounded ... the stairs are actually done! (much applause, cheers).for dramatic effect ... here is the route we took to get there. first, how they looked when we moved in, with brand new builders beige carpet:
with the carpet gone:
after removing tack strips and such (note paint blobs e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e):
and after sanding:
after staining:
and finally, after 2 coats of clear shellac ... i present ... the stairs (cue hallelujah chorus) -- sorry about the glare, not much light so had to use flash: 
the shellacing was a bit ... odiforous. picture yourself stuck inside a bottle of vodka for about 4 hours. it's gotta be something like that (if you remember from our past experiences with shellac, you'll know it's in solution with denatured alcohol). i think the 2nd picture (the landing) is interesting. look at the strips of wood on the landing from right to left (skipping the first piece because that was the nosing piece) and pay attention to the grain in the wood. whoever installed that area obviously did not care that the 4 boards he bought had radically different grain patterns. didn't even care enough to mix them up much before he put them down. but maybe it's just perfectionists like me who notice stuff like that. all told, i think we spent roughly 60 hours refinishing ... not including removing the carpet and associated random nails, tack strips, and ample staples from at least 2 generations of carpet (i'm guessing another 6-10 hrs). i wonder how a carpet runner would look on the stairs? hahahaha. ok. not. i think i'd have to shoot myself if we covered them up after all that work. we're really happy with the results (despite a few imperfections and the stain looking darker than the floors), almost as happy as we are about the fact that it's done! done. done. as a bonus, we (and by we, i mean Chrissy because i was sick and lazy) were finally able to really clean up all the dust (and take down the dusty garland on the rails).
and for more pictures, the new furniture. we've had it for probably a month now i think. it's finally getting nicely broken in ... you don't feel like you're sitting on big flat rocks anymore. we're really happy with it, especially for the supercheap Ashley furniture price :-). sorry, again our house doesn't photograph well at night.
we moved the old couch upstairs into the office, along with the old TV (so i can watch basketball when Grey's Anatomy is on or something). the other chair is in the guest bedroom now. 
not pictured among the multitude of pictures in this post ... is all the freakin snow we got. i think we ended up with about 15" of new stuff. i got some pics, but they need some tweaking before posting, so maybe next time. might try to get some more too.ok, so what's next ... the exciting world of shoe moulding! i know, edge of your seat excitement. it does mean i can bust out the new miter saw and brad nailer. the fun never ends.
posted by Chris and Chrissy Miller @ 10:57 PM
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