Paint and Trim, Continuing on in the Stairwell

Paint and trim in the stairwell. Back in the 1950s a large portion of the screened in porch was enclosed to create a back entry, a bedroom and this interior staircase. Before that the only access to the basement was an outside stairwell on the north side of the home. That was pretty typical back then but I’m willing to bet everyone got sick of that pretty quickly. “I gotta fill the wood furnace so just let me put on all of my winter gear, trudge around the house outside to get down to the basement…”

When I was really little I still remember my grandpa throwing wood down to the basement when they had a wood furnace. I wasn’t very old when they switched to a fuel oil furnace but my grandpa never stopped going out to the woods to collect and cut firewood.

His excuse was the little wood stove my grandma had in the kitchen. (But really he just loved to be outside.)

She called it a “trash burner” and it was pretty much the spot to sit by on any chilly day.

All winter long she would start her fire in the kitchen and fill a big tea kettle full of water. She kept the tea spout propped open so it wouldn’t whistle and would refill it throughout the day as the boiling water added humidity to the house.

I also had a wood stove here for a few years before replacing it with our pellet stove.

All that wood burning has to be at least some of the explanation of why everything in here was just so terribly filthy.

I probably should have used a primer but I’ve been so impressed with Ace’s Royal line that even with the state this place was in it still only took two coats.

This stairwell has really been a long trudge for me but that first coat of paint made such a difference I actually started to get excited again. I got the second coat done just a couple of days later and moved right on to trim.

I learned when I trimmed out this house to PAINT YOUR TRIM FIRST. Of course there will be touch ups but painting your trim when its laid out on saw horses is a heck of a lot easier then when you’re on a ladder.

Not to mention if your trim color is different than your wall color you’re also saving all that time in taping it off for prep. Another perk of course is that, without trim, there practically isn’t any prep when you paint your walls first.

I knew I probably wouldn’t have quite enough 1x4s to trim out everything but I also knew I would be darned close and could, at least, complete ALL of the ladder work in this space.

Did I mention how much I hated working off of that ladder?

Finally getting it out of here was one of the highlights of my year. Its been there since JUNE!

This house isn’t huge but I painted, cut and put up every single piece of trim in it and it was ALOT. Over the months I developed a pretty good system. I would put up every FULL piece of trim I could and then I would work from a set point around taking all of the measurements of all the rest of the pieces I needed.

I did the same thing in here, using as many full pieces that I could and focusing entirely on getting the ladder out of the room so I worked from the back wall to the door.

I got to use my new electric brad nailer!

I know, I’m a total dork to be this excited, but not having to haul my air compressor was really nice and it wasn’t terribly expensive.

Another thing I learned about trim is that a little glue is a really good idea. In this situation I actually used caulk because I had some on hand and it was white so that was a bonus.

It doesn’t take much (just a couple of dollops) but it really guarantees your trim will stay put for a long time. And 1x4s like I’m using are notorious for warping so the glue helps with that too.

The second I didn’t need that big ladder anymore I put everything down, got everything out of the way and TOOK IT OUT.

It was amazing.

I did a little dance.

There was light at the end of this project finally and my gosh what a totally different feeling space.

This place was so grimy and so gross before. I think that that actually had quite a bit to do with why I found it so hard to get the motivation to work on it.

Did it feel like it wasn’t worth my time and effort or something?

I’m sure glad that that didn’t turn out to be the case!

The difference in this space is SHOCKINGLY BETTER

I still have a couple of pieces of trim to put up and then I can touch up before moving on to painting the door. I ordered window film for the glass to cut down on sun glare and to give this area some privacy too.

(Honestly I wouldn’t have chosen a full glass door here but it was free and its hard to beat some extra natural light.)

After that I already picked up my gallon of gloss black Rustoleum for the stairs and the side walls. That’s not going to be a very fun job as I’ll have to work from the bottom up but at least I’m not on a ladder anymore!