I've been spending a whole lot of time working on the stairs in our house.

Originally we had planned on just ripping them out and replacing them, because they were carpet grade stairs. Now if you don't know what carpet grade stairs means let me share with you.

Basically, it means the stairs are crap. They' look like crap and while they are structurally sound, you could never salvage them if you removed the carpeting. The bull nosing is splintered and cracked right off in chunks, and there are knots all over. Considering we removed all the carpeting in the house years ago, you can see this posed a problem.

One thing I wasn't expecting though were estimates for 2k to replace the stairs, and that was even with me removing the old ones myself. Plus since the drywall was already in place, I was given the impression that aside from installation damage, they'd have to be made a little smaller to fit.

So I've been working on them, sanding, priming, wood filling broken bits, using a hair dryer to scrap liquid nails out of the corners. Pretty much that's what I've been doing lately...if anyone was wondering. On a side note...yeah it sucks. When I get everything done, we're gonna paint the risers and stringers the same as the trim (swiss coffee) and then carpet the threads (tops of the stairs) with some type of berber, tight knit carpet. I have high hopes it will turn out good.

Stairs when we moved in

All carpeting taken off

Where I'm at today

And for no reason, some pictures of cats I've been to lazy to post:

Sexy moxie...bringin' Rubenesque back

Insert "in ur" cat joke here