Painting the Stairs

  We moved into this house eleven years ago.  At that time I bought a five gallon pail of latex paint.  I used the 'apartment block beige' to paint the dry wall in the garage and the paint grade stairs going into our basemen before we moved in.  I painted the garage knowing that once we got moved in we'd never get around to painting the dry walled walls and it would look forever unfinished. (like our previous place). 

 A while ago the stairs into the basement had really started to look rough.  There had been eleven years of wear and tear;  plus lots of dirty boots and spilled coffee/juice/pop/tea/etc stains  accumulate on the satin finish paint.  Glossy paint would have worked better but didn't come in the amount I wanted for what I paid. By the way I bought the paint at the ReCentre for $25.00 according to the price written on the plastic bucket.

Looking Down

  I certainly can't complain about the quality considering it lasted this long

  Painting stairs has a couple of challenges so I suggest you wear knee pads especially when painting the lowest stairs. You can also see that every other stair is un-painted.  This way I painted my way down stairs, painting treads and risers and was able to climb out of the basement leaving the treads to dry over night.  Today I did the missed stairs and hey presto.

looking up

  I am going to give the stairs a couple of days to completely dry then I will go back with a trim brush and clean up any little missed spots.  

  Painting tips:

  The internet is filled with tips for paints but I thought I'd share a couple.  

 I used small foam rollers to do most of this job and so only needed a brush for the tight corners.  The small rollers are really easy to clean.

 I put the paint tray in a plastic bag before I put the paint in it so there was no clean up of a messy paint tray.

 And I made my own paint stirring drill attachment.  The paint sat in the basement for eleven years and so had settled fairly solidly to the bottom.  I broke the solids up with a stick and then whipped them for nearly an hour using my low speed 1/2 inch mixing drill.

  My stirring attachment  started life as copper wire twisted artistically into a giant mixer head.  An hour of run time in thick goo means now it's just twisted.  

    When using old finishes/paints it is a good idea to do a quick test before putting it on your project.  In the past I have had varnish that would not dry and so had to be stripped off. 

This time  I mixed the paint, strained out a few lumps that didn't seem to want to break up and then painted a board from my scrap bin before trying it on the stairs.  I wanted to be sure the paint would dry and...that there was enough pigment etc. to make putting it on worth while.  It appears that latex paint can be recovered when left to separate for years.  

  Once the paint was re-constituted the actually painting part of the job wasn't too tough at all. Which suits me just fine.

cheers, ianw