Staircase Walls Painted

So not much of an update, but last night and this afternoon, I got the walls of the main staircase/stairwell painted. It's a lovely shade of pale grey which turned out just how I wanted. Pics soon. I will likely just go back to Google Photos for my photos, but I need to re-familiarize myself with their system. I had moved away from them because I hated it.

WENT SHOPPING! (Doors)

Alright, I realize half of you think this blog is practically dead, and I can't blame you at all for that. It's a bunch of work to keep it updated, and I've been busy saving money, and getting settled into my new job.

But things are coming! Major things!

Yesterday I planned out a day trip with my friend Pierre (the same one with the Victorian Farmhouse), to finally go buy some interior doors. I found ONE company (Reno Depot in Quebec) who carried some affordable interior wood doors in the style I wanted, but the nearest location is near Montreal (about an hour away). The doors are 5 panel, solid pine, and priced at only 74.99$ each. Comparable doors (special order or stock) from other local retailers tend to fall between 300-800$ PER DOOR. Not gonna happen, as I need 8! Pierre had access to a van/truck so I just had to pay for the gas. We stopped and had Chinese food for lunch.



The doors are not the super high-end "engineered" doors with beautiful clear veneers on the fronts. They are just solid knotty pine, and they do have small inconsistencies (which is fine with me). That said, once they are stained and varnished they will be exactly what I wanted, and they should look great. I was worried they might be crappier looking in person than how they look on the website, but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality. The doors are apparently made from sustainable wood sourced, and built in Brazil.

They only had 9 doors in stock and two of the doors were damaged (one had a broken top corner and the other one was damaged by packing straps and sun-darkened) so rather than make a trip to the second nearest location, they offered 75% off on one, so that door was only about 20$. I got the one with the broken corner and I should be able to patch it. All together, the 8 doors cost 625$ incl. taxes.



These doors ONLY come in 30x80, which is conveniently the size I need for all the doors. The only potential problem with them is that the bottom board is a BIT wider to allow for trimming, but I need to cut off 2-3" on some of them, which will be quite a lot to remove. There's not much I can do about it, so I will try to make it work.

On the same trip, we were also able to stop by BMR (another retailer largely popular in Quebec, but with a few Ontario locations) and I got the solid birch treads for my staircase. The first one we went to had only 1 left in stock, but a second location about 5-10 minutes away had a whole pile of them. Birch treads are hard to find locally. In town I can only get oak or maple, and only as "kits". The single treads were 24$ each as opposed to over 40$ for a kit (Home Depot/Lowes). Total cost for the 12 steps I need: 330$. I will have to get the risers (the flat upright boards) cut locally from veneer plywood/particle board since the kit ones or separate ones you can buy aren't tall enough for my stairs (I need a custom size).

(No pic) <-- Actually scratch that, you can kinda see the pile of them in the first picture!

I also hope to order the flat roofing supplies to do the garage roof later in the summer. I want to try to do that when I have a few extra days off work, but I think I'm only free around September for days off.

STAY TUNED!

Small Side Projects

I recently finished painting the area under the stairs on the main floor. The underside of the stairs will stay raw wood (I had put all the nicer sides facing inwards) and I trimmed-out the edges with some spare lengths of 1/4 round. As mentioned previously, the door was also trimmed-out in plain casings on the interior side (the same as the other closet interiors).

For the walls, I used the expensive "oops" paint that I had originally bought to use in the bathroom, back in 2010. It's a shade of beige, but I found it was slightly pinkish, and a bit too dark for the bathroom, so I picked a different paint colour. So here are the results. I actually think it looks pretty good. I might use the same paint for the back stairway/entrance at the back of the house on the second floor (since I only used a fraction of the can).





There was no space on the left side wall for a baseboard or any kind of trim along the bottom because the drywall ends up flush with the edge of the floor, and flush with the edge of the log beam on this side. Because of this, I left both sides without any kind of baseboard or bottom trim, and I just finished the drywall and painted right down to the floor.





The 1/4 rounds were painted the same colour as the walls. I figured that it might look weird if they were white (like the rest of the mouldings/trim) because they're so small.



This is a small job I did for my mother as her birthday gift. She needed the height of her landing (a cement stair) raised because it has sunk over the years to the point where the step to get into the house is close to a foot high. She has trouble with her joints, so this was starting to be a pain for her and she asked if I could make a step for her.

This step is CRAZY because all 4 corners are different heights (ranging from around 5" to 7 1/2") to accommodate for the uneven slant/sinking of the existing cement step. This new step was designed so that it sits over the top of the slab, creating a third (or fourth?) small step, while also ending up nice and level. It was a bit tricky because of all the odd measurements, but I got it made entirely from scrap wood (she didn't even care if it was painted or not), and I filled all the holes, primed it, and gave it 2 coats of light grey oil paint (already had this on hand). I installed it just a few hours ago, and it looks great!



I might go take a photo of the step in daylight for a better "after" photo, and so you guys can see the setup.

Other than these, I've also been working on completing the modifications of a cheapo wing chair that I'm redoing (for myself), and just today I started building an antique (repro/salvage) bookcase, using a pait of old doors out of the salvaged "firewood" (the first pair shown).

Painting & Touch-ups (Photos From Earlier This Week)

Here are some of the photos from a few days back. When I was preparing the door jamb for the front door (using BIN Shellac Primer and a coat of white trim paint), I also repainted a bunch of casings in the house where pine knots were bleeding through, as well as to touch up small nicks from the past year or two. Also shown in these pictures is a bit of the "under the stairs" drywall and mouldings.

Here's the basement door casing taped-off. The main reason for taping it off was to prevent any difference in colour that might show with the BIN primer. I removed the tape when I was ready to use the normal white trim paint.



Here you can see some of the visible knots. There are more than just these two or three, they just don't show up that well on the camera.



Two of the corner stakes on the main floor (which are cedar) had yellowed a lot, so I redid those too.



The casing in the hallway upstairs (showing knots). This had been sealed, but not enough, apparently.





The worst ones in the whole house were the 3 that make up the archway in the master bedroom. These were put in by the POs (that's old-house-speak for "previous owners"), and when I was originally redoing the master bedroom, it already had at least 2-3 coats of paint on it. I added primer, and then 2 or 3 new coats of paint, followed by additional touch-ups a year or two later, and the knots were still bleeding through. I figured that with close to 7 or 8 coats of paint it would stop bleeding, but this is why you really need to use a shellac sealer on pine. Nothing else works.

Again, I was not repainting all the mouldings, only these 3 boards, so they were taped-off.







***

Here's the basement stairs after all the mouldings were installed and primed: large 1/4 round along the stair runners, and plain casings on the reverse side of the door (same as upstairs closets):





The top casing is just notched to fit around the stair runners.



Nothing too exciting about the "after" photos of the casings. Basically I just did 2 coats of BIN, plus 2 coats of white trim paint. It looks white again, and hopefully it will STAY this way.

Rough Stairs Finished!

Here's the last part of the staircase build. Once I can afford to cap it in the finished wood, I'll be making more posts about it, but for now, it's "done".

To secure the three "floating" ends of the stringers at the top step, I custom made 3 metal brackets. These are made from 1/8" mild steel (7$ from any hardware store). I cut the length into 3 sections, marked them, and drilled them. They were bent roughly to shape with a vise and hammer.







I could maybe have tried some sort of "joist hanger" hardware on these, but the 1/8" steel will be much stronger than the thin metal versions. Making these myself was probably cheaper as well. They are secured directly to the structural beam.



After I had the top secured (in the correct spot for my measurements) I then nailed the staircase to the walls on either side. I used large 4" nails for this.



This morning I cut and installed all the rough steps (nine 3" screws each, and also secured on the revers with 4 screws in the risers).







This shows the 4 horizontal screws on the back sides.

I'll also point out that I put all the "nice sides" on the back part of the staircase, since I probably won't finish the back. This is why the front part of the stairs already look especially cruddy (paint drips, scuff marks, etc).





For the top step, I simply installed a 2x4 filler block at the top, and made a taller riser. The riser is then screwed on the front, and on the back.



The top "step" (floor edge) will need special detailing/moulding work, and it's basically going to get a 3 sided rim (painted the floor colour), and hollow columns on the ends to continue the illusion of the door frame down to the step. A bit hard to explain, but you'll see this in detail when I eventually put it together.

Stairs Continued

Here I've started to install the risers. These are 5/8" thick scrap plywood (I believe this was subfloor material I removed from one of the rooms. Possibly the living room or dining room). I fastened these with nine 1.5"screws per board. Everything on the staircase will be screwed together, but the staircase itself will be nailed in place. Nails are important in case the house needs to shift slightly. The nails are actually stronger than the screws (screws can snap while the nails will just bend).





In this photo you can see that 2x8 that I laid down across the opening to hold the stringers. Without this board, 2 of the stringers would have been basically floating in the air over the hole. Originally there was some subfloor here, but it was cut back at some point. You can also see how short the bottom step looks, but remember that the final height will be 2 1/4" taller than this.





Same as above, the top step looks much too tall, but there will be a 2 1/4" height difference. Once everything is done, ALL the steps will be 8.5" tall.



Looking down (looks neat!)



Everything seems to line up really nicely.



That's as far as I've got for now. Today I went and bought some large nails, and I shimmed and nailed the stairs in place. I also added 3 metal brackets to support the 3 stringers at the top. I still need to cut and install the rough steps.

Removing The Old Staircase & Drywall Repairs

Before starting to demolish the old stairs, I laid two large old boards (2" x 12") over the basement stair opening. This made it easy and comfortable to work, and I was able to have a step ladder over these as well.



Removing the old shitty stairs (I don't normally curse, but these were absolutely awful) was probably the worst part of the entire project. It was messy, and none of the steps came off easily because they had been nailed as well as screwed down. The screws were puttied-over and painted so I didn't bother trying to find them. I used heavy prybars and a large crowbar.







I had started the demo late one evening, and I did the other half the following afternoon.



Another thing that made the demo worse was that the contact glue used on the rubber tread sections was still gluey and sticky, and any kind of contact with the glue meant a gross and difficult to remove mess. It was like honey, and the only thing that removed it was lacquer thinner. I was very careful to pile the old pieces carefully, and to completely avoid skin contact.





A lot of the rooms throughout the house (wherever they changed the drywall) have insulation in them. Kind of useless on interior walls, but I suppose it helps block sound a tiny bit, so I've left all of that there (and patched where bits were missing).



About 6 of the 12 old stair "points" broke off during demo.



This was an "exploratory hole" done years ago, but some of the framing will need to be fixed now.







This is the wall that makes up the hallway (where I have the coat hook shelf with clocks on it). This wall was a later addition, which is why the construction is completely different.



This is where I started to notice I had a big problem.



Illustrated below, is the height issue with the stringer. Basically, it needed to drop a good 2 or 3 inches, around the spot where the arrows are pointing. One thing I didn't really calculate earlier was that because of the adjustments, the height of the top stringer step had to land at 10 3/4" down from the finished floor. Again, to recap the math: 10.75 + 2.25 (my 2x10 rough step plus 3/4" hardwood) gives me my final 8 1/2" step.

That said, the nice drywall "angle" that I had done years ago, and that I was pretty sure would have AMPLE clearance was definitely going to have to go.

:(

Bye-bye all that hard work and planning.



At least I got a good shot.



Also note that this was a "controlled demo". All the edges (tape) were cut to minimize the mess, and make re-patching easier.



The stringers had to be notched. I didn't like doing this, but I had no choice, and I did NOT, repeat *N-O-T* want to redo the entire doorway and arch.



Rough fitting seems to work out really well.



On this side, I even had to notch the inside 2x4 a bit.



I am really lucky that the notched area landed in a good area of the steps, otherwise I would have been royally screwed (I would have needed to rebuild the entire basement doorway - AGAIN). The blue line is 3/4" that I removed later on to make the angled ceiling piece (the drywall angle over the basement door) land in a nicer spot.







At this point, everything was good to go, except that now all the drywall was messed up due to the new (correct) location of the stairs. Part of this would be covered with mouldings, but a lot of it wouldn't.





I decided to fix ALL the drywall all in one shot for the best finish. This was a real pain in the butt, and it involved a lot of creative recycling and planning, since I had a very limited stock of drywall (old and new), and I also wanted to fix some of the existing problems on the staircase walls at the same time.

First, I finished the framing for this upper right corner. All the arrows point to new framing pieces. The plywood with pocket hole screws is a good trick for very tricky areas like this.



This is one of the only shots I took from upstairs. I luckily have the other rear staircase I could use during this project.



I believe this was end of day 2.



One of the complicated drywall patch pieces.



Middle of day 3, with most of the drywall done.







I don't normally show the mess, but trust me, there's always a mess.



The last sheet!