Wood Stairs

I have been wanting to rip the beige shaggy goodness off of our stairs for several years now. Finally it is done!

My kiddos didn't want wood stairs because they prefer to lounge on them and wood stairs ain't good for loungin'. Good grief.

But I am the queen of my castle, well sort of. So once the kids got old enough that falling down the stairs was less likely, and once they accepted chairs for sitting, not stairs, we began the process. Here are some before pictures:

bottom stairs were always dirty....always :(

shaggy goodness should've stayed in the 1970s

posts were just 4x4 pieces of wood stained. Nuttin' special.

I sent our contractor some inspiration photos. I wanted wood treads, white risers, and wainscoting. Thank you Pinterest!

Demolition began.....

Bye bye carpet and ugly rustic handrails.

Wainscoting begins going up

Once wainscoting was done and sprayed the stairs could go in. I used my favorite white I use everywhere else, White Dove by Benjamin Moore.

White Dove was sprayed on wainscoting and walls

Hickory treads went in next. White Melamine was used for the risers because they are super easy to wipe scuffs off instead of having to repaint scuffs on white-painted wood risers.

Every project take longer than you think but it's always worth it in the end. I repainted some of my outdated picture frames navy blue and we are done!

not really into yellow and orange anymore

Navy Blue Doors

I have finally painted all my interior doors (on the first floor) of my home a beautiful navy blue. And I couldn’t be happier.

 

I’ve seen so many others paint their interior doors black but black is too harsh for me. I did, however, want a neutral color like black, dark and rich and classy, but not quite as harsh as black. Hence navy blue which in my opinion is a neutral.  I tried it out on my garage door, as seen in this photo below, a couple years ago and knew that would be the choice for my interior doors as well.

My Dad lives in California and I live in Utah. But he comes to town a few times a year and we always end up doing some DIY project, like painting dining room chairs or building this headboard. There isn’t much my Dad can’t do, he’s the handiest man I know. So on this particular trip to Utah we painted the doors navy blue. And by we, I mean he painted and I did prep work like wiping doors, pouring paint, and getting him a diet Mountain Dew every hour. My dad rocks. And he has 30 years experience spraying with an air compressed sprayer so I am happy to let him do the real work.  I am not a perfectionist but even I know that some things need to look nearly perfect.

The color is Archipelago by Sherwin Williams in a Satin finish purchased at Lowe’s. (The original color was Sailor’s Coat by Olympic paint that I used on the garage door. Both colors are virtually identical so choose either.) A true navy blue is almost black so I chose carefully—I wanted it be a cross between a navy blue and a royal blue. We used a gallon and half to paint 12 doors. The week we painted it was nearly 100 degrees each day so we figured (through trial and error) that watering the paint down with quite a bit of tap water enabled us to spray the doors really heavily for nearly a one-coat coverage BEFORE the hellish desert heat would dry them. Before we watered down the paint it was drying so quickly it was leaving marks on the doors, kind of like when you use spray paint from a can. Watering it down to about 90% paint, 10% water did the trick. Had the temperatures been lower I’m not sure we would have needed to water it down but it did seem to make spraying them go on easier, hot or not. With a few exceptions one heavy coat is all they needed.

My kids are old enough to be helpers. And summer vacation dictates I use them as slaves. So they did most of the removing of the doors, cleaning the doors, and drilling off all the hardware. And then they added all the hardware back. And hung them again. Good kids.

Spraying 12 doors took 2 days. Utah is hot and never humid so the doors dried fast enabling us to flip them and coat the back usually within two hours. When we flipped the doors over we laid towels across the 2x4 strips for a ‘softer’ place to rest them. We didn’t want any new paint being scratched while we painted the flip side. I had one set of saw horses and bought another so that Dad could spray 5-6 at a time.

As mentioned above, it was so hot at 100 degrees that the overspray dried before it hit the garage floor. Well, most of it did. So I could actually sweep up the excess paint at the end of the project. But the floor is still a little blue and my Dad said a pressure washer will remove that. I don’t really care, it’s the garage floor. Lay down tarps though if you do care.  My husband cares. Bummer.

I am in love with these doors. It really classes up things around my house.

Above is a small hallway, below is the master bedroom which is all neutrals and navy blue anyway.

A few tips:

1. Make sure you label your doors with a pencil on the bottom. Even though we didn’t paint the bottom of the door the overspray covered them and then I couldn’t see which door went wear so I began writing the name of the location of door, then covering it with tape to protect the name. Once we were done painting I removed the tape and could easily tell which door went where.

2. Color is Archipelago by Sherwin Williams in a Satin finish. I chose Satin for a slight sheen that is only seen when light reflects off of it. Yum.

3. Don’t dry doors in direct sunlight when it is 100 degrees. The door will warp. We did this to a couple doors as we got antsy for them to dry and it took us a day or two to ‘bend’ them back into shape.

4. Watering down the paint makes it spray on with no trails or spray marks. More details in blog post above.

Refinishing my kitchen table

I have been putting this project off for a few years. I hate stripping and staining. Hate. It’s a butt load of work. But I knew when I started looking at new kitchen tables just to avoid the work, it was time to quit being lazy and get it done.

Here’s the butcher block table before. I bought it new in 2006 and chose the stain for it. But after 8 years of deep pencil indentions from young kids, and well, the color simply being out of style, it was time to update this table. Get rid of the outdated orangey-brown color and say hello to a weathered gray color.

The below photo proves how long I’ve had this table. Our kitchen has been remodeled, the chairs have been repainted blue,  and that adorable 10-year old is now 16 and drives a car. Help me.

The below photo was in 2006 when we first moved into our house.

I’m just so happy how it turned out. And happy to be done.

Here are the details. I didn’t strip it. I opted to just sand it all down with my orbit sander. If the table had lots of curves sanding would not have been the best choice. But luckily the table has simple square legs and nothing too ornate that a sander couldn’t reach.

This took me about 3 hours with a 60 grit sandpaper. Sanding removed the finish and all the dents and scratches. Stripping with chemicals would have only removed the finish. I was glad to get rid of the dents and dings too.

This is so dusty and messy so I wore those gorgeous goggles and mask. Once the finish was removed I went over every surface again using 120 and then 220 grit sandpaper.

Here are my tools—sandpaper, sponge brushes, oil based stain, water based polyurethane in ‘satin’ sheen (dries so much faster than oil based poly), and a 320 grit sanding block. Not pictured is the tack cloth I used. I originally wanted to use a ‘flat’ finish polyurethane for the table—no sheen. But they don’t make it! So satin it is!

 

I used Weathered Oak for the main stain. I applied it with the sponge brush. It wasn’t quite gray enough so I went back over the table with the Classic Gray very sparingly, just in spots, with a rag to add a little more color. I pretty much used both of these entire tiny little cans. I will say this: stir, stir stir these stains. I thought I stirred enough and then halfway through staining with the "Weathered Oak” I realized all the gray pigment (kind of heavy and thick) was sitting in the bottom of the can. That’s probably the main reason I had to use Classic Gray over the top—the color just wasn’t mixed well enough to give me that gray hue. In fact, the can suggests stirring every few minutes. I ignored that, and once again, the chalky-gray pigment sank to the bottom. STIR! STIR! STIR!

My table is alder butcher block. Each wood will absorb stain differently. I only used one coat of stain. If your table is one big piece of wood it will look more uniform I am sure. But since mine is butcher that explains the variations in color throughout.

I let it sit overnight even though you only need to let it dry one hour. I sanded with the 320 grit sanding block, wiped with a tack cloth,  then using a sponge brush painted on the first coat of polyurethane. Use long continuous strokes to go from one side of the table to the other side. If you do short strokes you will get sponge-y marks. I’ve done this on other projects and it is ugly. Let dry two hours, buff with the sanding block, and add the second coat of poly. Do not skip sanding in between coats. I have refinished enough pieces of furniture to know that sanding between coats of polyurethane is essential to get that smooth-feeling finish.

Once it had 3 coats of poly the hubs put the apron pieces and the legs back on…..

….I sanded once more, and it’s all done! Two full days of elbow grease and my table is as good as new.