BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Budget Decor Painting stairs

After 8 years of traipsing up and down, our stairs were in bad shape, so I finally decided to paint them.

It is challenging with a houseful of kids! I've been making everyone take their shoes off and put on clean socks to go up and down while I'm between coats.

Fortunately my husband and I sleep on the main level, but our kids are starting to hate me! LOL

I think the hardest challenge I have with decorating is trying to decide on the color scheme, because I love so many colors.

I have a yellow stairwell and I'm painting the stairs blue and the risers white. Not sure if I want to stop there or create a design. It seems like a fun place to do something a little more extravagant or whimsical. I have a lot of ideas. I am using leftover paint that I already had in my house which is making it very affordable.

Has anyone else painted stairs? I'd love to hear what you did.

Donna

I have wanted to paint a rug on the staircase going up to my third floor bedroom ever since I bought my old house. Since my idea of painted tiles was pooh-poohed, I figured paint was the ticket.
You start out painting the background color, then the designs (swirls, flowers, whatever) on the uprights > [_ and some on the treads, too. Coat the whole works with a good sealer that will protect the paint against wear.
Sunset magazine, several years ago, showed a staircaser that someone had painted the uprights with plants and fish as tho' it was a giant aquarium; it was GORGEOUS!!

Good luck with your timimg and the kids dilemma!

Do it and show us the pix.

We had a few stairs going up into our bathroom in our old house. The only thing I hated about those stairs were that people tended to scuff the risers when they walked up it. Right after painting you would get scuff marks on your pretty white surface. The stair treads were stained. I had always though that stenciling a design on the risers would have been pretty. Our stairs are in bad shape. We need to replace all of them. Hopefully some of the boards will be salvageable (most of the treads are all split) as I would love to make some bird houses with these.

I haven't made any progress on my stairs. I'm thinking I made a mistake trying to paint them with 5 kids still living at home! I can't keep anyone off them long enough to finish. I might have to pull some all nighters to get it done.

They still have a coat of blue on the steps. I am debating whether to continue painting the risers or mosaic those.

Connie - have you done any work on your stairs? Made any birdhouses?

Donna, I wish I could say yes that I have done work on my stairs but I am still stuck in my bedroom (where I had started stripping the floor) and now I am putting stain on my windows in there. I decided I wanted to strip the window and I should do it before I finished the floor just in case an accident happened. I didn't want to have to cry about my new finish on my floor being ruined!

Good thinkin', Connie. Meanwhile, I need to pull up the carpet in our house. It's 8 years old and was builder's low-grade and is in need of replacing. But, I don't want to put down more carpet bec the kids keep tracking in red clay from outside. Even when I tell everyone "TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES!" the carpets are just constant maintenance and now they are just getting worn, too.

I am researching painting the plywood underneath. Apparently it's not as "tacky" as it sounds. It may be an affordable option until we can put down wood floors which is my real desire.

I also want to remodel my kitchen, so this is a way to have decent floors until we change the interior footprint and then can splurge on the wooden floors. I don't want to install them first and then have to rip them out to change the kitchen!

Donna

I painted that floor in the bedroom I am working on and the paint did not adhere very well. Make sure that you check into that Donna. I am not sure why ours didn't adhere, it had been painted several times before. After a couple of days it started coming off. That is when I decided that I wanted to strip the floor and have a wood floor. It will be beautiful once I get it all done. Hubby says by the time I am finished in there we will be moving out because we are too old to climb those stairs to go to bed at night!

We have your red clay too. Not as bad as when I lived in Alabama though. People always ask how our white dog stays so white. I tell them it is because she doesn't think she is a dog and only goes out to potty and go for her walk! Our youngest (still a puppy, he will be 3 in November) loves to roll in the dirt, roll in the grass. Luckily he doesn't show dirt LOL