Monday, September 10, 2007

Day 1.1--Blast and Varnish





This is my stairwell. As you can see there's no lovely baluster and railing combo. Just a nasty railing atteched to the wall. Around the corner at the top is the landing. It looks like this:


(This is not really the photo I wanted to show you, but of course I can't find it.)

Why am I showing you this? Well, today, I decided to wash the floor after this painting job. Armed with a hot bucket of water and TSP, rubber gloves, a cloth and a scraper, I tackled it with lots of elbow grease. Too much elbow grease, as it happens. I managed to scrape up about 1/4 of the varnish on the landing.

The problem is this: the landing (which you can't see) now needs to be sanded and re-varnished. The question is: should we stain this awful old orangey-red wood a different colour? Or--just go over whatever it turns out to be after we sand it? As you can see from the photos, the stair treads, the window trim, and balusters are all the same nasty stuff. We will not tackle all of those--just the treads and the landing. The floor at the bottom of the stairs is "golden oak." Above stairs--I have no idea. I think it was oiled once upon a time.
Advice?

1 comment :

LED Tape said...

I always usually wash the walls/floors before painting because you never know if you might need to re plaster. LED tape

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