As you can recall from the ‘After’ picture, I not only redid the railing, but for additional drama, I added a wallpaper treatment to the very blank and boring wall. 

Originally, I was going to play it traditional, and add plain white panels to the wall, with molding on top.  But I decided to kick it up a style notch, and add wallpaper panels instead.  It was more dramatic, and less expensive. 

I chose the bold chocolate brown color because I needed something to draw your eye away from that contractor carpet.  Don’t look !  Oh no, you looked.  I shouldn’t have even said anything. 

You can see why I needed to draw my visitors’ eyes away from the carpet.  Fear not, it’s getting replaced with wood steps in a year or two, just as soon as my children are a bit older, so as to avoid hurting little heads on slippery steps.  But I can see it now:  dark stained steps, white risers, I can’t wait!

The wallpaper I chose is Jaisamand in Chocolate from Graham and Brown.  No need to order it from the company, it’s actually available online at Target.  The overlying pattern is bold but stylish, modern and traditional, all at the same time.  The background is a flat mocha color, and the pattern is created from two colors: cream and shimmery champagne.  Just my style. 

Photo: Graham & Brown

I mentioned yesterday that I didn’t use any wallpaper paste with my wallpaper treatment.  Why?  Two reasons. 

First, I have two small children.  As much as I encourage clean hands, there will come that inevitable moment when I find the grubby handprint on my precious paper.  By not using paste, the individual panel is much simpler to replace.

Second, when it comes to bold design statements, I can be a bit of a commitment phobe.  I may tire of this look in a few years, and want to upgrade it or change it out in some way.  Not using paste makes that simple. 

How I Installed My Wallpaper Panels without Wallpaper Paste:

Step One:  I used a tape measure to calculate the height and angle of the chair rail and marked it on the wall with a pencil.  To avoid a vertical cut, I used the existing width of the wallpaper as my standard width for the panels, and with a tape measure and a level, I marked the positions of the panels on the wall.

Step Two:  Without covering my marks, I painted the lower part of the wall with Martha’s Saddle Brown.  This turned out to be too dark, so I repainted it with Valspar’s ‘Peat Moss’.  (I actually lightened the color to match the wallpaper by mixing the paint with three parts Peat Moss and one part white.)

Step Three:  Here’s the big surprise.  I attached my trimmed wallpaper pieces to the wall with a staple gun.  It worked perfectly ! I used a level to make sure it was straight, then I stapled every four inches, using my hand to flatten the wallpaper to the wall.  No paste.  No kidding.  I knew I’d get extra staying power with the accent molding as well.  

Trimming the edges once they were up on the walls:

You observant readers noticed that at the top of the stairs is a double panel.  How did I keep the seam tightly together?  My perfect solution was packing tape.  I taped the back of it together with that extra wide but thin, clear, and sticky packing tape.  Then I stapled the whole thing to the wall. 

If there had been more than two panels, or a much larger section, I would definitely have used paste, but with these smaller sections, my trick really worked. 

Step Four:  I purchased chair rail and trim from Lowe’s and painted it with ‘Swiss Coffee’.

Step Five: I convinced Mr. CG to trim the chair rail and tack it to the wall.  He also volunteered to cut all of those complicated angles with a miter saw for the wallpaper panels.  Piece by piece, he hammered the trim to the wall with finish nails.  He even spackled the nail holes afterwards.  My heart goes pitter patter at the sight of it.  Me so very lucky.  I heart Mr. CG.  

Step Six:  Sand the spackle and touch up the nail holes with paint. 

That’s it !

One final touch.  I had four picture frames that used to hang in the space, but the wood had too much of a red tone to it.  Like I did with this mirror, I painted the wood frames with two coats of $2 metallic taupe craft paint to give it a champagne finish. 

I printed black and white pictures of our family on my printer, and hung the new frames on the wall.  I like how their new finish plays off the champagne tones in the wallpaper. 

How much did this cost me?   Paint, Stain & Stripper: $60, Wallpaper: $75, Chair Rail & Molding: $60, Prep Supplies: $30, Painting assistance from our friend Mike: $200.  Total cost = $425.  Mike saved me a lot of time by priming and painting the base of the staircase while I kept the kids occupied.  Without Mike’s help, the cost of the space revamp would have been about $225.  Just imagine how much it would cost to pay a professional to do the whole thing !

One final reminder of the Before:

And After:

I’m so delighted with the end result, and I’m convinced we added real value to our home.

Welcome to the first of two articles about how we transformed our dated oak stairwell into a dramatic entryway.  Now I make it a general policy not to bore you with too much yada yada, but please forgive the longwinded prelude.  When you put over 30 hours into a DIY project, you milk it for all it’s worth. 

Where to begin?  First, I must explain the problem.  The staircase was natural blonde oak.  Dated and dreadful.  NOT the first impression I ever wanted to give my guests.  What was a girl to do?  Replacing it with European style iron railing was the cost of an automobile.  Fixing it seemed too daunting.  Enter Rhoda.  I love Rhoda!  Rhoda at Southern Hospitality blog stained her entire oak staircase a lovely dark shade, from top to bottom, and planted a big seed in my inquisitive brain.  Why if Rhoda could do it, then perhaps I could too. 

That same week I was watching one of my favorite classics ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ with Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor.  If you can take your eyes off either of them, which is almost impossible since they’re both practically perfect physical specimens, you notice that they frequently descend the incredibly beautiful staircase of Big Daddy’s plantation home.  When I saw it’s espresso dark railing, white balusters and base, it was true love.  I had to have it.  

So yet another seed was planted.  After Rhoda, Paul and Liz, I was completely inspired.  Off to the home improvement store I went, daring myself to do the impossible: transform the oak monstrosity into something sophisticated and stylish.     

That said, let’s begin.

I’m almost embarrassed to show you, but here is the before:

But darlings, look !  Here is the dramatic after:

Transformed from bland to grand:

How I Gave My Ordinary Oak an Espresso Finish:

Step One:  After all the prep work, taping off the balusters and laying down carpet protection, I stripped the existing varnish off the staircase with Klean-Strip.  It was nasty, smelly full-of-chemicals stuff.  I had to ask Mr. CG to keep the kids away for an entire day.  I wore a mask, and the fumes gave me a bad headache.  And I still had to sand afterwards. 

Step Two:  Sand, sand, sand, then sand again.  I spent about 4 hours just sanding until my fingers cramped and refused another stroke. 

Step Three:  I cleaned off the sanding residue with wet wipes, then stained the upper hand rail with Minwax Gel Stain in Walnut.  This is a wonderful product which I had used before to redo the highboy in the entry.  It’s not Minwax’s fault that I wasn’t satisfied.  It’s just the nature of oak.  It’s such a grainy wood.  When the stain was applied to the oak, it gave me too much of a stripe-like effect.  Darker was much better, but the product only took me half way to the look I desired.

Step Four:  I did something unconventional, and a bit daring.  I glazed the wood with two coats of semi-opaque Burnt Umber acrylic craft paint.  Yes, you heard me right.  Craft paint.  I know purist wood refinishers are absolutely appalled, but I’m telling you, the semi-opaque craft paint filled in the gaps and gave me just the espresso finish I wanted.  See the difference after one coat? 

Yessir.  These were the three products that gave me the look I desired.  Minwax Gel Stain in Walnut, Burnt Umber semi opaque craft paint, and Minwax Wipe On Poly. 

They gave me this finish:

 Hello gorgeous !

Using the glazing effect with the semi-opaque craft paint, rather than latex paint, helped to preserve the visible grain of the wood. 

Step Five:  With the help of a dear friend, and professional painter, we primed the bottom of the stairs with oil based primer, then finished it with two coats of ‘Swiss Coffee’ oil based white paint for durability.  Thanks Mike !

Here’s another peek at the staircase before the base was painted. 

And after it was painted:

Step Six:  To the upper railing only, I applied one coat of Minwax Wipe On Polyurethane.  This took maybe 10 minutes.  No joke.  Pour a few drops on a sponge, wipe on, and you’re done.  It was dry overnight. 

Here’s just one more look at the dramatic change.  We plan to upgrade the carpet to wood steps when the children are a bit older.

The dark railing now coordinates with my refinished highboy in the entry.

I am loving the dramatic deep finish of the railing up against the white balustrade. 

Tomorrow, in part two, I’ll share with you all about the wallpaper treatment I added to the staircase.  You’ll be surprised to learn I used absolutely NO wallpaper paste. 

But for today, I hope you’re all encouraged to take action, and transform your oak into something classic and wonderful.  Yes you can.

Here’s the Before and After:

There are two schools of thought on painting oak.  The first opinion is that painted oak never looks good.  I happen to subscribe to the second opinion.  Painted oak can look good, if you follow through with several labor intensive steps.  

Clean and remove all dirt and grime from the surface.  Then sand off any varnish to get to the raw wood.  For big projects like kitchen or bathroom cabinets, you’re better off using a power tool sander rather than sanding by hand.  In my case, since my project was small, I used a medium grade sandpaper to remove the small amount of varnish on the mirror.   Be sure to wipe after sanding to remove all dust.  

I taped off the beveled mirror with painter’s tape and newspaper.

Prime with an oil based primer.  Sometimes you must apply two coats, especially if you want to minimize the grainy nature of oak.  In bigger projects, allow to dry 24 hours.  In my case, I used a fast drying spray paint primer.  The first coat was dry after 30 minutes, so then I applied a second coat.  It is a good idea to apply two coats of primer since oak is a very grainy wood and the primer helps to fill in some of those grains. 

When your primer is dry, apply at least two coats of paint, preferably with a sprayer rather than a brush to avoid brush strokes.   In my case, I applied three coats of spray paint since the coats are thinner when you spray versus using a brush. 

I didn’t bother painting the back since no one would see it anyway.  The mirror had no hooks on the back, so I purchased these from a local craft store:

Since the mirror is hanging in my daughter’s room, I also stapled a simple sew sash to the back to glam up the look of the mirror. 

Here is the final looking glass in her room. 

For a great tutorial on transforming a kitchen’s oak cabinets into beautiful white cabinets, visit this post at the Howsed blog.  

In this post from the Cottage Magpie blog, you can learn how to prime, paint and trim oak cabinetry with your own color of choice. 

What are your thoughts on transforming oak ?