My domain is expiring. I want to change the way I write and approach things. My return readership is low, as far as I can tell. I’ve made the decision to end this website …but don’t worry!

New and past content will be going to lizdee.org. I’m still working on the site. It will be up in a few weeks!

Part 1

We stained and glued down the treads, caulked, filled nail holes. Added a rope railing. The stairs are mostly done, and I love them and think they are beautiful.

Before/During

After

A lot of people who’ve seen my stairs through the process have remarked that they aren’t as steep. We did nothing to change the steepness of the stairs, I think that was a side benefit of the whole project.

I end up redoing projects a lot. Our dining room table holds the record. I got the table from my mom after we moved into our second apartment. I wasn’t a big fan of the yellowed, knotty pine finish. We painted it red, without any sanding or finish coats. That lasted a while, but the paint began to peel off.

We refinished it in yellow and green, this time with sanding and finish coats. It lasted a lot better. But the tabletop started to chip, and the finish was never that smooth.

I didn’t want to paint the table again. I got the idea to simply put on a new table top. The table was narrow, so at the same time we fixed the tabletop we could also make it wider.

While at a home re-store, I found some leftover acrylic panels. We bought them for $2 a piece. Three across made the table top. After sanding down the top, we attached them with epoxy glue. It was a very simple solution, and I like my table more now.

It went from too narrow to too wide, but that’s okay. I also learned that more coats doesn’t mean a good paint job. The paint job still chipped and didn’t look great because we didn’t take the time to really research how to do refinish furniture well. I sanded down through a finish coat, paint and primer. It took a long time.

I told myself I wouldn’t re-arrange the upstairs furniture for about a year. At least not until we finished the basement. Everything was just fine, and moving furniture around was a waste of time. I made it four months.

My resolve disappeared. Re-arranging furniture is like getting a new house. It’s fun to try something different. I’m always looking for ways to make it better, and overall it’s a pretty quick project. I still feel like I lost a bet though. But it’s to myself, so I kind of still won too, right?

The office is back to being the dining room, and the large living/dining room is now just a living room.

Before

Now

Is it better? Yes, for a big family party. I like the dining room in the back, it is closer to the kitchen. It still could use a bit of fine tuning, and I’ll decide more after I live with it for awhile. I have realized that nothing is perfect. Maybe I got a bit closer.

And we finished-ish the stairs. I’ll get more pictures soon!

In our home, there were the most awful stairs ever. They are the stairs that kicked off our re-model project because the tall people living here were tired of hitting their heads or ducking. The stairs that have been occasionally slipped on with cheap carpet. The stairs that have walls that nobody bothered to do more than put on a coat of primer, not even adding a layer of texture or mud.

After  we lowered them down so we didn’t hit our head, I decided I did not want to keep big-box special awful tan carpet on them. I had seen blog post of people who removed the carpet and had painted or stained them, and thought we could do the same. This is what we were left with after carpet removal:

Painting them didn’t seem like a good option. They were not in good shape. There were gaps, uneven boards, rough surfaces. I had looked at stair restoration kits, but they added up to more than I wanted to spend.

I despaired for bit, but got creative and found a solution. First of all, Joe attacked the stairs with a hammer and took out no less than fifty nails that some idiot, incompetent or drunk construction worker with a nail gun had nailed in our stairs with little regard to where they went. They were not holding anything together, but were making the stairs quite squeaky.

After nailing in less than half that amount, almost all the gaps in the stairs were gone, and the stairs no longer sounded like stepping on a mouse nest.

Joe and I took a trip to big-box store. (It was a date with a babysitter, because doing so with kids is a nightmare. But then I feel sheepish that my dates are to stores, because that’s what my parents did growing up and I thought it was kinda lame, but now I’m doing it.) Then I did my work of taking the kids away for an entire day and Joe worked on the stairs and I came back to this:

Out of all the things we’ve done to the house, this was probably the biggest transformation. It’s not done yet at all; one main reason is because the can of stain we bought was mis-labeled, halting the process of staining the new treads.

I watched stair kit restoration videos, and checked online stock and googled a bit. I came up with the idea of resurfacing the back with wainscot beadboard (about $25 for the whole sheet and we had extra), and putting on new stair treads (about $100 for pine stair treads). The stair treads did raise up the stairs by one inch, but there was actually an extra inch at the top stair anyway after creating the new landing.

I’ve got more in store for these stairs, just as soon as we get the right stain color.

The only holiday I decorate for is Christmas, and even then I don’t do very much. I do love the few things I have. It’s fun to slightly change my home just for one month.

We have this nativity my mother-in-law crocheted.

The Christmas tree, with the bottom part purposefully cut off because I have a newly walking baby and it’s always a mess down there.

These candy chains are my favorite. One chocolate kiss per day between now and Christmas Eve. Unless you are three year old and lack impulse control and had to have your candy chain taken down because you ate half of it.

To make these chain, just hot glue the candy onto the ribbon. It’s really easy, and they are a lot of fun. Who doesn’t want a piece of chocolate everyday?