Day 288 | October 15, 2018

Now that the living room and dining room are done, it is time to start tackling the staircase. First order of business is to get the handrail sanded so that we can get it stained the same color as the floor. Here is the before photo of our staircase. Only change at this point is the new hardwoods and risers (risers still need to be painted). Our old color palette here is going to change from browns to grays, but this gives you a good idea of what we are starting from.

Day 289 | October 16, 2018

Here is part one of getting the handrail sanded. I used a spray that helped removed the stain, so here is a days worth of work where the previous stain started glopping (sure, that is a word) off. The chemicals were nasty smelling and I am not sure this really did a whole heck of a lot (other than make a mess).

Day 290 | October 17, 2018

And now first pass at getting the railing and cap sanded. It was another really, really messy day.

Day 291 | October 18, 2018

Took a break from the railing this morning to volunteer in the library at school and caught Gavin and his friend Carter reading together and it made my mama heart full.

Day 292 | October 19, 2018

Took the morning off to go for a fall walk at Bellevue Botanical Gardens with Kelly. What was supposed to be a sunny fall day started out with thick fog. Kelly and I had a great time wandering and taking a break from all the house projects.

Day 293 | October 20, 2018

Here we go again … Jeremy has been travelling a LOT this fall and this weekend was one of the only ones where he was home and we weren’t completely scheduled out. While I can paint the house on my own, there are certain parts where I absolutely needed help and our two story entryway was one of them. We had been chatting about how to tackle it and ended up renting 12-foot scaffolding to roll around in there. Here is the initial set up that shows the “before” with light and dark brown paint color and our wood stained front door and the wood stained trim on the second story window…

Day 294 | October 21, 2018

And here is the after where we got two two coats of the Mindful Gray on the walls and I did three coats of the Simply White on the window trim.