This Old Staircase - A Learning Experience

There are a lot of edges & borders in a set of stairs. A lot of taping, if you are painting them in two or more colors. What, I asked myself, is a more efficient way to handle this?

Do all the taping at once, I answered me. Then paint. Like so:

Oh, I thought I was sooooooo smart! But, yeahno...don't do this.

I taped all of the edges just before knocking off for the day, thinking it would be all ready to go and I could hit the ground running in the morning. It was, and I did. And then....

Turns out there is a right way to use painter's tape, and where there is a right way, there is - you guessed it - a wrong way. The right way is to tape only the area you are immediately going to paint, paint it, and remove the tape, before the paint is even fully dry. Otherwise the painter's tape sticks to the paint or primer underneath and removes some of it when you take it off.

So, wait...what even is the point of painter's tape, again? That's pretty much what regular tape would do. It's quite a hassle to do it the correct way; you have to keep interrupting your flow to tape, and then removing the tape while the paint is wet without smearing it creates a whole new set of challenges.

So, I had to sand and repair the primer, then let that dry, before I could move on to the fun part: the colors!

The second coats are drying now. I settled on a dark chocolate for the tread, and teal for the riser. So far they look good, although the dark steps show every cat hair - and we have plenty of those. Still need to go back with a tiny brush and touch up edges - in old houses, nothing is a straight, clean line, and there are lots of little bumps and divots that challenge the steadiest hand. And actually, mine is not the steadiest hand, but I am pretty good with a brush, due to my profession.

And then comes my favorite part: the grace notes. Little additions - stencils, decoupage, free brush designs - that charm and engage the user. I tend to plan on a light hand with these but sometimes they take on a life of their own. We'll see! Photos when I have them.

This Old Staircase

My blessing and my curse is that I can see what things could be more easily than I can see what they are; so when I bought my century house more than ten years ago, I saw what I would make of it, overlaying and obscuring the reality of it.

As I say, this is a blessing and a curse. The house was and is perfectly livable, and I got it for super cheap; but the grand dame I imagined still awaits behind a miles-thick layer of hard work and expense. I've been chipping away at it here and there; did some external painting, painted a guest room & added a wallpaper frieze at the ceiling level. The biggest projects, however remained untouched. My kitchen is a horror show of dirty-looking dark yellow cabinets, a cracking, curling lino tile counter, and a hideous, hokey backsplash. Each of these things seems to require fixing the others simultaneously - no point putting a new counter on cabinets you hate, right? So the job remains too huge; there's nowhere to begin.

Partway between "pecking at the edges" and "impossibly daunting" lie my front hall stairs. They are badly scuffed and chipped, in a gray more suited to a cellar floor than an entryway. For more than ten years I have looked at them thinking they need an update, and, finally, this week I set about making it happen.

First that awful old paint had to go. There were many layers, and someone had already painted over chips and peels and divots. There was just nothing to do but take it off. So: paint stripper.

Paint stripping is nasty work. The chemicals are caustic and smell like the fumes alone ought to kill you. I had to close up the kitties in bedrooms, for fear they would step into the stripper and burn their little pads or worse, poison themselves trying to clean it off!

I discovered the wood underneath was discolored and unlovely, which meant I would be repainting rather than staining. Nevertheless, I tried to strip off nearly all of it before sanding - in an old house like this, there's a good possibility of lead paint, and I'd rather not have that dust flying around. Since I would be painting over it, there was no need to remove ever speck of old paint, though: it just needed to be smooth and clean, to take the layer of primer.

Here's where I left off yesterday, with three stairs left to sand. Should be easy to complete this step today, along with all the taping; tomorrow I start painting, primer first, of course. I am still considering my color options: I am thinking a dark chocolate brown for the stair, and either a teal or some version of spring green for the riser.

I'm excited to finally be making the changes I envisioned eleven years ago, and it marks a change for me as well: Do the thing. The thing won't do itself. 

Hunker Down - Nor'easter Coming!

If you look really close, you can see me there in Augusta, in the 10-16" section, starting late Thursday night. This is said to be a true Nor'easter, bringing moisture from the ocean to inland Maine and dumping it in a huge white heap.

Snow storms are almost always over predicted so I am expecting the lower end of that range, but still: ten inches is a lot of snow. Not a life-threatening amount - we aren't going to suffocate in our homes, snow covering the windows - but it's sure going to shut Friday down.

But hey! It can be fun having an enforced day off (if you don't lose power. That sucks.) Get a good book (and some batteries or oil for your lanterns, just in case) and settle in.

Check out my Pinterest Board: My Town, Augusta, Maine

I collect images from in and around Augusta, so others can see it as I do. Check them out here.

Vigil

A heathen prays for wisdom for America.

Maine Restaurant Named as one of the Best in the World

Eventide Oyster Company, in Portland's Old Port, was described by Conde Nast Traveler as "the oyster bar of your dreams."

I confess, my dreams do not have an oyster bar, but maybe yours do. If so, you want to check out Eventide, at 86 Middle St in Portland.

The View Across the Scarborough Marsh

I grew up in Scarborough. The marsh with all its attendant wildlife was ordinary to me; cormorants and heron and egrets were just birds. I didn't know what an amazing place it was until I moved away.

My first awareness of environmental issues came because of it. I was six, and my family had just moved to Scarborough from Brewer, an inland city in Central Maine. One we drove by an abandoned building - more of a shack, really - bordering the wetland. Someone had painted this graffiti: Save the Marsh! - The Gull.

My mother explained that there were people who wanted to fill in the marsh, to build houses and businesses. I pondered on that: houses and business were good, right? But where would the thing that lived there go? Some other marsh? What if that one got filled in also?

This was before environmental laws protected areas like the Scarborough Marsh, but blessedly the marsh survives. I visit it frequently; my father's ashes are scattered here, and I go to smell the salt air, watch the birds and think of him.