Patching gaps in stair treads

 

When we removed the strange bump out in the stairwell, it left us with an issue - gaps between the stairs and the wall. Tyler glued up strips of fir and wedged them into the gaps.

 They then were chiseled down and carved into the appropriate shape.

 Then some sanding and finishing touches. The little block in back is our experiment with color matching - it looks like a good match.

 The pieces were then coated with a mix of urethane and stain to try and match color. The picture below is after two coats - the color gets a little darker with every coat.

 We still need to put on a couple coats to get the perfect match but at least the big gaps that collected dust and dirt are gone.

Stariwell - removing the bump out and doing baseboard

We were deciding how to finish the stair trim because the wall at the landing had a very strange bump out, you can see it in the far left side of the picture above. Finally, Tyler decided to just cut into it and see why it was like that, figuring that there was a duct or beam there. It turns out that the downstairs is built with old true 2x4's (2" by 4") while the newer wall upstairs was built with new 2x4's (1.5" by 3.5") and the person who did the work just left it looking strange instead of accounting for the difference. So, we had a 1/2" bump out to deal with.

 As you can see above, the old true 2x4's were cut down so the new drywall could be flush.

 It then was patched, textured, and painted.

 Doing the trim along the stairs was a little tricky but the board was cut to fit and put in place.

 The top trim was then added. Things still need to be caulked, filled, sanded, and painted but it looks much better then before.

Floor Urethaning Upstairs

 We got the first few coats down on the newly sanded floors and the stairs. Will do more next weekend but it's nice to see the shiny wood and the darker color coming out.

Stair Stripping Continued

Here is my Dad, Stuart, stripping the landing on our stairway.  Happy Thanksgiving! The first picture shows the stairs before the stripping process.

More work on the stairs (Bottom Part)

This week both Kristen and Connie worked on stripping the steps, getting new paint on all the kickplates and urethane on all the treads. At this point most of the paint has been stripped off the treads but there are still a large number of pits that have to get picked out one by one using some of Kristen's dental tools.

All of the kickplates were painted up with the trim color before they were scrapped or sanded.

Once the first coat was dry it was scrapped, filled and sanded.


Then back with the small brushed to get the paint into all of the corners of the stairs.

And here is what it looks like once they all are all painted.

Historic Home Tour - Showing our home

Our house was on the Historic Everett Home tour this weekend so we have been working hard the past week (with the help of Kristen's parents) to get everything cleaned up and all of the tools moved up to the shop.

We also had a long list of items that got worked in each room to get the house in working order. 

Here are a couple of the pictures of what it looked like just before we had around 300 people come through and check out what we have been working on the past two years. We are going to rest for a couple of days and then back to work on the backyard project.

 

Stairs - painting, adding baseboard, more stripping

 Kristen started painting around the stairs just to get a first coat of paint on. There is still stuff left to pick at on the treads but we figured it would be nice to see more of what they would look like.

 You can see here that only the top step is finished and urethaned.

 Tyler also added the baseboard cap along the stairs so that got caulked, sanded, and painted as well.

 It's nice to add some fresh paint to make the process seem like it is progressing.

 

Trim around window, under stairs, top of doors

We put some more of the trim up around many of the windows, doors and stairs. The first pictures show the trim that was placed along the bottom of the existing stair trim. We still need to come back in with some of the wall paint.

 

This trim took a little longer because it had to be machined to match the existing trim on the bottom of the windows. These pictures show the trim on the bottom of the new kitchen windows.

Some of the doors also needed some new trim added to their tops. This was milled on the table saw and router table to match the houses original trim.