A touch of black

Hello there! Hope you had a GREAT weekend! The weather has been so lovely here – this week it’s supposed to get really hot for the first time. I’ve loved it so far.

So I wrote a to do list on the blog two (ahem) years ago and I just finished up one of the things on that list this weekend. Are you surprised? I am not.

Of course that little DIY turned into changing up a few more things. Are you surprised? I am not. :)

I’ve shown you the gallery wall on our stairs numerous times over the years. It’s an oddly shaped wall that I made work by hanging photos of the kids. It’s always been one of my very favorite parts of my house. Here’s an old (and dark) photo of the stairs:

I loved that saying on the wall (the best things in life aren’t things), but when we had half the house repainted years ago that vinyl had to come down. I’ve had an empty spot where that was and finally got around to filling it.

Those frames are from Michael’s and are called floating frames. The photo goes between two pieces of glass so there’s no mat – the color of your wall shows through:

Last week they were 40 percent off so I picked up one more 8x10 and a square 14x14. 

I used the square one in the middle and just printed out a quote I found online:

All of these photos are in black and white and I print them right off our home printer onto regular paper. Our printer was low on ink when I printed the quote so it didn’t come out perfectly, but I actually kind of liked the effect so I’m leaving it. I may print it again on nicer paper eventually. Or not. :)

This wall has always had photos of my son and stepdaughter, but now that the grandson is here it is time to add him to the wall of love as well:

I’m running out of space so the kids just need to stop being so cute. 

The one other small change was painting the railing black. It’s been a brown color for years but I have been craving a classic black for awhile now. And the railing on the upper part of the stairs was never painted (that to do item that I finally got to), so now they match, three years later!:

I have big and little plans for the stairs in the future – the big stuff may not happen this year but there are a few details I want to fix on the molding and I’ve been planning to restain the stair treads for years now. You can see here how red they look compared to the hardwoods:

I can’t wait to get that done! But it’s obviously not a huge deal to me or it would have been done two years ago. :)

I totally dig the black railing with the black frames – I think every room needs some black in it. It’s classic:

Here’s another look at the darker version years ago:

And how it looks now. Buh bye pink walls!:

Do you have a gallery wall in your home? I love them down a long hallway, but as I mentioned last week we have none – so this is my “hallway.” :)

To see how I made the DIY starburst mirrors go here. To see how I added the trim along the stair wall go here. And for more on how I tore the carpet off my stairs and finished them, go here. This transformation is one of my favorites and cheapest!

The days of our stairs

First up, my friend Cassie over at Hi Sugarplum did a FUN series while she gallivants around Italy (I’m not jealous or anything). You can check out my answers to her 20 questions here. Go ahead. I’ll wait. :)

Fun right??

I’m feeling so nostalgic about our house lately – I don’t know if it’s because I’m coming up on five years of blogging in less than a month (whoa) or because as of five days from now we will have lived in this house for nine years.

It may be a combination of both -- it’s just this time of year I guess. :)

I love looking back at the transformation of certain spaces in our house and one of the projects I’m big fat puffy proud of is our staircase. I can’t believe in five years of blogging I only have one before picture of the stairs with the carpet, but here it is, in all of it’s dark, horrible picture-ness:

I got a wild hair a few years ago – I knew we had beautiful wood stairs under that carpet because I was here every. single. day. when they built our house.

One day I got the nerve up to tear off the carpet and the mess started – there was blood. Lots of sweat. And tears. (Just a little.):

Tearing up the carpet was easy. Getting every tack strip off and all of the staples (the millions of staples!!!!) was some of the hardest work ever.

But it was worth it when I saw the potential:

I started sanding but then my late father-in-law stepped in with his heavy duty equipment – they got all the overspray off the steps for me so I could start staining and painting.

I still say this transformation is one of the biggest in our house, and I only spent $50 total:

I still LOVE having the memory of my father-in-law working on this too. It’s like we’ll have a part of him in our house forever – he worked SO hard to help out.

You can see that I painted the wall below the handrail while I was painting the risers. Later on I finished that part off by adding trim:

And then I made a simple change that made a big difference – painting the handrail:

Isn’t that crazy? I couldn’t believe how much that little change kind of tied it all together!

And I still don’t know if those mice are coming back this fall. Maybe with time I will forget. Or not. :)

We said goodbye to the pink(ish) walls last year and I haven't’ missed them one bit. Then I added my DIY sunburst mirrors to the big wall in the staircase:

Getting rid of that dark ceiling in the dining room made a HUGE difference too. (Filing that one away into “what was I thinking?”)

But I felt like it was looking kind of blah – I loved it, but I’m craving some color here lately.

I recently added just a bit with the little changes I made to the foyer and I think it already makes a difference:

But I still want more. (We want more! We want more! Name that commercial.) I had to take down the “best things in life” saying on the gallery wall when we painted, so there’s an empty spot needing filled still (almost a year later…this is how I roll) I think I’ll just add another frame, but I’m wondering if I should paint the frames? Just a little color? I don’t know. It will come to me if I sit on it (forever).

And soon I’m having the treads sanded down and I’m going to stain them all the color of our hardwoods (Jacobean stain) so they match. Right now they are a reddish tone and the fact that they don’t match is starting to bug me.

It’s been a long process, one that was harder than I thought it would be, but it has made SUCH a huge difference in our house! The before, a few years ago:

And today!

And I still stand by my thought that hardwood stairs are less slippery than carpeted ones. I’m really good at falling down stairs and so far so good…knock on wood. ;)

Have you torn the carpet off your stairs or out of a room? I thought about it for months (years) and one day just started ripping – scary but so worth it in the end!