Mel & Liza: Hallway and Stairs: Before & After

We are celebrating the actual completion of a project around here, and it's great to be reminded that we are making progress! When we bought the house it had beige, semi yucky carpet installed going up the stairs and on the whole second floor, and we knew we wanted to remove it all. Rather than installing hardwood floors upstairs (didn't fit in the budget), we decided to paint the old pine subfloor, hoping to freshen up the look with minimal cost.

Here are some before shots, where you can see the open space below the stairs and the lovely carpet that we took out first thing.

The space underneath the stairs felt like a dark, unusable corner of the room and actually made the whole area seem smaller, so we had it enclosed to create a coat closet. Now it looks more appealing and we have tons of storage, so it's a win-win.

The stair treads themselves had already been painted at some point, so rather than try to strip them and stain them again I continued the painted floor look all the way down to the first floor. We chose a really dark brown espresso color to give the surface the feeling of warmth and some contrast, and I painted two coats followed by a layer of acrylic polyurethane for protection and a little gloss. Because of the dramatic distinction in color between the dark floor and surrounding trim, I had to be particularly careful painting the treads-- I even whipped out my artist's brushes to get into the tiny corners and between spindles. The plan was always to recover the stairs with carpet, this time leaving some space along the edges of the runner. As you can see, I only painted what I knew I would need to cover, since floor paint takes ages to dry. Why work harder than you need to, right?

When my sweet sister gave us the carpet for our bedroom last month, she also threw in an extra piece of this low pile yellow and blue checked pattern left over from another project in their house. I love the colors and the look, and the piece she gave us works perfectly in our upstairs hallway as a runner. She bought it through ProSource, which thankfully has a store here, too, and I was able to match her piece and order more for the stairs.