Painted Stairs

A beach cottage isn't quite a beach cottage without lovely painted stairs!  As part of our "carpet removal" process in our home, we saved the stairs for last (they were a pain!), but the end product was totally worth it!  The first thing we had to do was remove the carpeting, which was mostly painless, with a utility knife in hand.  Then, came the real pain.  We had SO MANY STAPLES in the stairs!  I'm sure there's a better way, but we went up them with a screwdriver to pry them up and pliers to remove them from the wood.  Next we had some kind of white lumpy mixture on the stairs, so we had to sand them down with a hand sander.  Then, came the fun!  Initially, I used a primer and then just a regular high gloss paint, but I quickly learned that it was not made to be walked on!  Ultimately, I switched to a floor paint- Valspar Oil Gloss Porch and Floor Paint, which took awhile to dry, but turned out beautifully and has been SO easy to keep clean!

(We also removed the old banister from the wall, since the other railing already extended up the whole stairway, painted the entire banister glossy white, and the walls a pale blue.)

Before:

After:

I'm contemplating putting black numbers up the stairs, like I've seen on some cute painted stairs, or something like, "Leave the sand at the beach" scripted on them.  Still have 1 more set of stairs to go...