The stairs are one of the few things I do not have a before picture of.

The gist of it was that they were covered in the same dirty ugly carpet the upstairs was

and we ripped it up with the rest of the carpet with the intentions of redoing the stairs ASAP...

We bought the house last January.

In October Robert put in new steps where they wind:

And in November he sanded them.

Then they sat some more.

This area of our home has always been a slight embarrassment and eye sore.

It never really felt complete...

So I did what any reasonable wife would do: I gave my husband an ultimatum

"Either finish the stairs by the time we've been in the house one year (January 3rd 2015), OR I will hire the first person that someone recommends me and I won't care how expensive they are".

We had planned a new years party at the house so the deadline had to be moved up. 

Sure enough when we came back from Christmas with our parents he got his butt in gear.

We began by re-sanding the floors and cleaning them off.

We used a minwax pre-stain that was oil based

Then we picked up another minwax poly stain in Provincial

(we actually grabbed the last can of it... 

right before some poor woman came over and asked for it)

But one of those smaller cans (not sample) was enough for this project.

We also used some trim paint we already had from repainting the house.

Once everything was sanded and bought, we began staining.

The picture below on the left shows what the first coat looked like (ignore my "hot" pants)

The right shows the disaster that was my stairs during this whole process.

Robert was hard at work:

We had originally thought three coats would be the magic touch but we wanted them a tad darker:

After the 4th coat we were ready to paint the risers

You can kind of see how dark it got here:

We knew we wouldn't be able to match our hardwoods downstairs so we didn't even try.

I am also ashamed to say that the walls are still in need of another coat of paint from the move

So I will not be showing a picture from the top of the stairs until I figure that out.

Hope to get more projects done around the house in 2015!

A while ago I did THIS post on my kitchen cabinet renovations.

At first, everything was lovely.

But then, slowly, my cabinets started yellowing.

YELLOWING.

It looked like the color yellow people's teeth turn 

(when they drink too much coffee and smoke too many cigarettes)

Its not as obvious at first but you can definitely see the strokes made from the polyurethane

Until next time,

So since moving in we have done a lot

Painting walls, hanging pictures, decorating

But I haven't posted pictures of the living room because it was missing something

And that something was color.

Here is the WAY before: aka how we bought it:

There was plenty of color on the floor

Thanks to my lovely target rug (shown above)

And I even has some pillows to bring in a pop

But the couch is beige, the walls are beige,

And the photo hanging over the couch was antique black and white (also above).

So I decided I needed a photo to spice up the wall.

Nothing crazy (because Robert would not like that)

So we found this on pinterest:

So we went to Michaels on Saturday

Bought a canvas and paint

And viola:

MAYBE we will finish the mantle one day so I can show everyone!

Until then,

We checked another project off of our list this weekend

The barn door is complete!

I don't know if I mentioned before but I hate when the sink is open to the master bedroom

And of course our house had that.

But we had a family friend who had a barn door mechanism

and I married a handyman...

who made the door out of some cedar siding and pine boards

Then we sanded...

Of course we need to add a door handle on each side

I'm thinking a heavy black iron handle

I just have to find it.

Updates on that later…

Okay so yesterday didn't go that well

I had a group meeting and when I left

My transmission basically died

Two hours and a tow truck later I came home

and my computer wouldn't let me log in

So I needed to work on something so that I could add a positive to the day

My in-laws came and brought a few things we needed to work on the house

And thus I was able to finish the master bath 

(minus two trim pieces which may never get done)

Before:

 That's it for now! 

What do you think?