Stairs: Final Reveal (One Room Challenge!)

Today is the final reveal for our stairs for the One Room Challenge!!! Eeeep, this one was a nail biter! Before I get into that let’s backup with a before:

That is how it looked a year before. I go over the big DIY failure of my stairs here. Last December we tore out the wallpaper and it looked like this since then:

Sadly, I’m not kidding. My stairs looked SO bad for SO long before I decided to do anything about it. I painted, added in fancy molding, put up a gallery wall, sanded down the stairs and painted some more. Last Wednesday the runner that I picked out arrived. It was my dream rug from Annie Selke’s Dash & Albert. In full disclosure, I searched the internet for hours before I found this rug. I reached out to Annie Selke about using the rug for the One Room Challenge and they were kind enough to send one over. So thanks to them (thank you, thank you!) for the beautiful rug- aka the make it or break it part of the makeover. The next day I dropped the rug off at the rug binding shop in my town. My stairs are 33″ wide and the runner is 30″ wide. I want some wood showing, so I wanted it cut down to 23″ wide so I could have 5″ of wood on either side of the rug. But when I called Saturday to check on it, their machine was broken! That was when it was supposed to be done. He gave me the name of another rug binder and said he could probably do it in 20 minutes so I picked it from the old shop and I brought it to the next shop. They said it would take 2-3 weeks and be $120 to cut off the sides and sew them over ($3 a linear square foot- the last shop was $1.50 a square foot- just some reference prices if you are wanting to do a similar project). Ugh! I was out of time so I took the rug home to think about what I should do.  Meanwhile, I cut the wood treads for the stairs with my trusty saw. We were in crunch time since this needed to be completed, photographed, and blogged about by Thursday! This was on Monday. I don’t work Monday (just watch my beautiful boy) so when he slept for 4 HOURS (he usually takes a 2 hour nap), I felt like the luckiest girl! And I worked my butt off for every minute of it- lol! The treads got installed by using construction adhesive. I put those in first so I would have an exact path for where the runner should go. I used rug runners from the Dollar store to add some extra padding (though if I was to do this project over again I would buy a better rug pad). I decided to be brave and cut the rug myself. It was actually super easy to do since I could just follow the geometric pattern of the rug and get a super straight line. It was pretty nerve racking though because I didn’t want to ruin the beautiful runner. I then folded the edge over and stapled it down. So the cut edge is hidden and nailed down. It took awhile to staple the whole thing in place, but you guys!!!!!!! It looks so beautiful!!!!!!! I am sorry for all of the exclamation marks, but I am just thrilled! I was sick of having ugly stairs. I was sick of being embarrassed when people come over and the stairs are the first thing they see.

Now who’s ready for some afters?!

Isn’t it so much better?! I could just cry looking at these. And I know that sounds like I am giving myself a big pat on the back, but the stairs were so bad for so long and I worked so hard, so you know, I think it’s ok if I love the results :). Right?

The gallery wall was really one of the key elements. The art goes floor to ceiling and is so light and bright. It is the crowning jewel on this project.

And, of course, the Annie Selke’s Dash & Albert runner is so pretty. It is much better going up and down the stairs. It’s so soft- Don loves it and it is much safer for him (the old stairs were slick and easy to fall on).

We love it! Thanks for cheering us on through this makeover. If you are just now joining us, Here is the plan and before photos from week 1:

Here is how I painted it from grey to white (without a ladder) from week 2:

Here is how I added the picture molding trim on the stairs, even with the crazy angles from week 3:

Here is how we added in art for the perfect Stair gallery wall (week 5):And my post about my plan to redo my stairs to prep for the tread and runner (week 5.5):Thank you for reading! What do you think? Much better, right?