♥ It's Finished! ♥

The staircase is {finally} finished…..and decorated for Christmas!

We just love it! It definitely has the cabin feel that we hoped to achieve!

And it was definitely worth the wait and the mess for the last three months!

Before & After:  What a difference.....I can't believe I ever liked that wallpaper!  Wow! 

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you'll stop in for the Sunporch Chat tomorrow!

Have a great Tuesday!  :)

♥ Sneak Peek ♥

Jason has been a busy bee working on the staircase. He worked all weekend, minus the time we were in church.  He's made great progress in the past few days!

I thought I’d tease you a little bit with a sneak peek. Please excuse the dust.

Oh what a difference it is! I can’t wait to show you the rest of it. Of course, I want to wait until it’s all done though! 

Jason is working on the trim work now and I’ve still got to tear down wallpaper and extend the red paint on the living room side wall. 

It’s got to be done in time for Christmas decorating, which for us is the first week of November!  :)

Enjoy your day! :)

♥ A Staircase Update ♥

We have progress on the staircase………slow progress, but progress nevertheless!

My carpenter (aka Jason) is a perfectionist and he’s pondered, planned, cut, recut, and redone posts and boards several times. I’m absolutely no help on figuring the measurements and the way things fit. I just know what looks good to me and I hold boards for him. I mean I’m the one that just hangs a picture by “eyeing it” and he finds studs, measures each side, top and bottom. So that tells you how much help I am on figuring out how all the pieces of the staircase fit together.  :)

But, I know when I like it and I like what’s starting to come together. The heighth of the posts will be cut down some from what you see in these pics and will also be sanded down so they aren’t quite as sharp and square, if that makes sense. The spindles will have 2” cut from the bottom so they won’t come that far down at the bottom.

And the thing that really gets me is that all of this that you see up right now is basically only up to make sure it all fits together properly. All of the staircase boards and posts will come down tonight, adjustments will be made to them, and then they will be stained. Then they all go back into place with all the other spindles added. Jason didn’t want to stain it all and risk messing up the finish trying to fit the pieces in, or wasting stain if it didn’t work out. And then there are still walls and doors to be finished as well in the foyer area and trim work to be done around all of it. And then there’s the one wall on the living room side that will have wallpaper removed and be painted red.

Here you can get an idea of how the treads and risers will look.  Jason temporarily put in a pair to show me how they will look together....the stained tread and the red riser.

I'm getting a wider staircase in this makeover too......5" wider actually.  When building our house, they made the stairs narrower than standard size it seems.  I always thought they seemed narrower than they should be.  I'm going to love that extra 5"!  

Yep, progress is slow but it IS getting there. I think there is a standing rule, or if there isn’t one established, there should be……..However long you think it will take to complete a home improvement project, plan on it probably taking twice that long. Now I will be happy if it’s all done by the end of October in time for Christmas decorating the first week of November.

Bless their hearts, my piano students are used to my house being a construction zone by now. I think they’re never surprised by what we have torn out and are working on!  :)

But, it will be worth it in the end. At least that what I keep telling myself!

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I enjoyed your comments yesterday. I’ve decided that if I’m a home stalker, ya’ll are too! Lol! And it really never occurred to me to drive around and look at homes at night so I could see inside the windows. I mean you ladies are serious about this!  But hey, I’ll have to try that!  I’ll say that you all made me feel much better.  I now know I'm not alone!  :)   And I’d LOVE to see homes in your area that you find charming! One more thing….Tammy of A Primitive Place said something that I didn’t even notice – all of the homes I showed had porches. I didn’t even consciously notice that when we got those pictures – guess I’m just naturally drawn to porches being a southern girl and all.

  Thanks for stopping by and have a great Thursday!  :)

♥ A Little Staircase Progress ♥

A stripped down staircase with no railings has become everyday scenery around here. There once was a time that would have really bothered me. I’m not sure it’s a good thing that it doesn’t bother me that much anymore though. Does that mean I’ve lowered my standards? Ha ha! Really, I’ve just learned that these things take time, and yes, I will have to live with inconvenience and an ugly staircase for awhile.  And folks coming in my home for piano lessons will see this mess.    BUT, in the end it will be worth it. And we can only do so much. I should actually say JASON can only do so much. I really have not had much to do with this home improvement project so far. Other than helping him hold a board here and there and moving boards from the saw horses, that’s about it. Bless his heart, he worked the whole time I was sick. I emerged from my 3 days in the bed to see a little progress!

Then this weekend, we could really see the progress. Just to update you, we decided against actual log siding for the walls. 1) Because it was really expensive. 2) Because the more we looked at the inside of cabins, the more we saw the knotty pine boards on the interior. 3) By using the knotty pine boards, all of the “woods” would match including the posts on the staircase.

Here’s the progress so far:

The wood makes it feel cozy to me. And for some reason, it makes that wall seem deeper. I like the stain color with my red walls, which was a custom mix by Sherwin Williams to blend in with our trim in there already . Although we won’t be able to work on it this weekend, we hope to have it completed before the first of October. We all know how that goes when you have a goal……something inevitably delays things, but we’ll just have to see.............

That ugly wallpaper is almost gone. There’s a little glimpse of it way up there……..see? I can't believe I ever liked that wallpaper.

I’ve decided we must have lost our minds to begin this project right before getting back to our homeschool routine. But that’s just like something we would do!  :)   Oh well, good thing about it, I’ll have a brand new staircase to decorate for Christmas! :)  And Jason even thought to put me some outlets in there for my lights.    :)

Thanks so much for stopping by today! Have a great day!  :)

♥ Tammy ♥