As part of putting my stamp on the former marital home, I have been painting and ‘artifying’ in a way that feels looks more like the style of my teenage daughter and myself. Some of you may remember the bead curtain I made for the kitchen, in a previous post. I moved on to the hall, and painted one of the landing walls bright red. It goes with the ‘inherited and can’t afford to replace’ carpet, and was effectively free as it was left over from another project. This was when I found out that the newly available ‘frog’ masking tape was not all it was cracked up to be, necessitating painting and repainting white glosswork….
I have since decided to strip the stair rail. Well, not quite true…I decided to give it another coat of magnolia gloss, without bothering to sand the existing paintwork down. This, predictably was a mistake, and the paint then looked like it had acne issues. So I was forced into doing what I should have done originally, and strip the paintwork back to the wood. This was with the intention of repainting it, but I really rather like the original 1930’s oak rail that has emerged. I have got most of the paint off, but not quite all, and it needs quite a bit of tidying and sanding. Using the hot air stripper to get the paint off was actually quite therapeutic. After I had got over my strop at having to buy another stripper. The previous one had been lent out, never to be returned…but that’s a whole other blog post.
The pictures show the current state of the wood. I think it has been stained at some point, then painted over, so the real colour of the wood is lighter.I now can’t decide whether to stain and varnish it, polish it with beeswax, or learn how to french polish it, most likely via the interweb.
*Those of you who read my Post about May, my friend: she bought me this flower picture, after I admired an identical one in her house. I think of her when I see it.
If these were your stairs, what would you do?
parsleythelioness 