Finishing Unfinished Business

Walk through my home, and you’ll find a bit of unfinished work. In the garage, there are the unfinished stairs the builder put in that could still use a coat or two of stain. Outside, there is the ramp that we had built for our backyard shed that now, two years later, could use some stain. The wooden perimeter (at the bottom of the shed) could also use some stain.

 

Then, there’s the unfinished pine stairs that lead to our unfinished basement. The stairs have never been stained and are now a bit dirty.

Because I hope to improve my home’s unfinished basement this summer, I hope to start off by staining and painting the stairs – with luck, the improved stairs will lead to a clean and beautiful basement play space for my kids this fall! I hope to paint or epoxy (possibly with Rustoleum basement floor coating) the basement’s poured cement walls and put Flor or Home Depot carpet tile down for the kids. I like the look of using a few different-colored carpet tiles for a pseudo checkerboard look.

 

There’s also the year-old window seat in our living room (in front of our new bay window) that needs to be stained. I am hoping my husband will tackle that this summer, since he’s much better at detail work than I am. (Hint, hint!)

First Things First

I will probably get some Behr wood stain for the ramp to the outdoor shed and complete that project first. I figure I can practice on that project so I can improve my technique before I try to stain the garage or the basement stairs. The basement stairs will be my last project, as I want to do that one right! If the weather is sunny tomorrow, maybe I’ll get started ASAP.

I’d love to stain the tread of the basement stairs and paint the risers white for a classic look, so I will probably follow the tutorial on painting and staining stairs that I found on ehow.com.

 

I’ve found some great inspiration on Pinterest.com  on how I’d like my basement stairs to look. We’ll see if my stairs come out as pretty!