Runner..runner....

Runner, runner....

July 3 to 7 --   The last several days were spent sanding, scraping, and painting the stairs for the carpet runner install on the 7th.  

I was armed with every scraper known to western civilization, along with tools to pull out old nails and staples that held previous incarnations of carpet and two electric sanders -- a palm sander and a random orbital sander. 

Oh yeah, let's not forget the sheets of plastic that I hung in hopes of containing the sanding dust.

I also learned how to apply wood putty to fill cracks and divots, and

I eventually got the hang of using a caulking gun, especially after watching about 5 YouTube videos

 I think the worst part of this was trying to remove the old caulk where it was rough and would catch the dust, especially in the corners.

The plastic sheets did a decent job of containing the sanding dust to the foyer.

and, I got very good at using the shop vac to clean up the sanding dust as I went along.

  

After two days of prep work and waiting 24 hours after applying the first coat of paint before I applied the second one, I have to say that the end of the stair treads look pretty good. 

I also put another coat of paint on the trim, both newel posts, and on the banister while I was at it.  I can't wait for the carpet runner to be installed!

July 7th  -- The carpet installer called early this morning to say that the carpet was ready to be picked up from the binder, even though he had told me last week that, given the long holiday weekend, he couldn't guarantee it would be ready by Monday.

Although the lighting isn't great, the runner looks fantastic, and the deep burgundy and flower pattern adds the right amount of color to make the staircase really look great.


Here is the view from the sitting room on the upper-level looking down

Here are two views from the landing (a.k.a. infamous 90-degree turn that prevents discourages any typical-sized furniture from getting to the upper-level), looking downstairs.  The only difference is that a slight movement of the camera affects the light from the skylight.

 Here are a few photos from the foyer, looking upstairs.

The "super-industrial" carpet treads were also installed on the stairs to the basement.

Here is the view looking downstairs

And here is the view from the basement looking upstairs!

And, there was a decent remnant of the carpet for the runner left over.  The installer, a wonderful guy, gave me the phone number of the guy who did the binding, and told me to tell him how I got his number and he would give me a very good price to bind it off.  The remnant will make a nice area rung that will  fit perfectly in the foyer. Sure enough, I called the binding guy and he will pick up the remnant on Thursday and bind it off for me.

It is such a pleasure to have craftsmen who are not only good at what they do, but who are also amazingly friendly and very helpful.

Given how the runner looks, all that work to scrape, sand, and paint the stairs was well worth it.