Oh, our staircase and upstairs hallway. I have been putting off writing this post. Why you may ask? Honestly, because I was terrible at blogging in 2018 and did not share about any of the progress we have made upstairs (unless you follow me on Instagram where I shared sneak peaks in my stories and posts), life happened and blogging didn’t – you can read more about that here. I aim to change that because I honestly love blogging and it is something I intend to be consistent with this year. Anyway, back to the upstairs hallway.
Sources listed at bottom of post for reference in case you are tackling your own staircase or railing remodel!
We have made a loooooooot of progress on the staircase and upstairs hallway, but I’ll start with a refresher of what the space looked like when we moved into the house.
Everything was carpeted. The spindles were very chunky and far apart (read: not safe), and the railings were really not (again, not too safe). We knew even before buying the house that this would all need to be replaced with two dogs and hopefully someday little kids running around.
We waited to start this project for a while because we knew when we replaced all of the spindles and railings that we would also want to have the same wood floors installed upstairs that we had installed in our main floor because we love them. This project was not going to be cheap (to us) so we new we had to save accordingly. We initially planned on replacing all of the spindles, railings, and stair treads ourselves. As you can tell from the picture above there are a lot of spindles and many feet of railing due to the catwalk that over looks both our entry and our living room. So we started with the smallest section of railing that overlooks the entry. It about 8ft wide and had 9 spindles.
We wanted the new railing to have a very clean, simple look since there are so many spindles and it is a lot going on just on its own. We opted to go with a more craftsman style that fits our house’s style with square spindles, square newel posts, and a traditional railing.
DIY Lesson
This is not a super detailed tutorial, more high level of what we did for those interested since we ended up hiring the rest of it out. Back in April 2018 we demoed the railing and spindles. Next we measured for and installed a new base plate (we used a 1×8 piece of primed MDF) since the old spindles were just installed into the subfloor with carpet wrapped around each spindle. We wanted the new spindles to have a cleaner look and also knew we would have hardwoods installed later which would be the exact 3/4″ height of the new base plate so they would be flush. We next installed the spindles by pre-measuring how far apart we wanted each spindle (we did 4 inches apart) and marking it on a piece of painters tap along the newly installed base plate. Then we used a spade bit to drill holes for the spindle notches to fit in. This is important if you are doing it – you have to install the railing before you can install the spindles. Next we measured, leveled and installed the railing at the height we wanted with a nail gun. Then we installed the spindles with wood glue in the pre-drilled hole for each spindle and used a nail gun to set a few finish nail in the top and bottom of each spindle. We watched a lot of how-to videos on this. What we learned from doing this small section of spindles – we are not expert carpenters and that is alright. Knowing this was roughly 1/8th of the whole spindle/railing install project and that the rest of the project would be more tricky because the remaining railings are all interconnected we decided it was time to call it DIY quits (though we are glad we did the bit we did!) and hire the pros.
Lesson learned: It’s alright to know your limits and know when you need to hire a professional.
Hiring the Professionals
The railing and staircase is such a focal point in our house we felt it was well worth the money we would need to invest in hiring the rest of the job out. Speaking of hiring the pros we also hired a drywall company to skim coat the textured walls in our upstairs hallway and entry way as well as scrape the popcorn ceilings upstairs and coat to a smooth finish (almost 6 months before we even tackled the DIY portion of the railing – proof these project take lots and lots of time, especially if you save to pay cash for things like we do). We chose to have the walls skim coated to a smooth finish as well as having the popcorn ceiling removed because we think this really updates a space and there’s no better time to do it than before you have new flooring installed! It was super messy, but we are very glad to have had it done, and had it done quickly. Our entry is also two stories tall and scaffolding was needed to get this job done – needless to say we are glad we didn’t tackle that ourselves.
We reached out to a couple of companies to get bids on finishing the spindle, railing, and staircase install as well as install hardwoods throughout the upstairs. We ended up finding one company that would do both, which was hard to find in the Kansas City area! We had already ripped out the carpet in our upstairs many months prior because it smelled and our dog fancied peeing on the areas where the previous owner’s cats had already done the same. We still had carpet on the stairs so we decided to rip that out ourselves to save a little bit on labor costs since we had already ripped out most of the carpet ourselves anyway. We also saved a bit of money by painting the newel posts, spindles, tread risers, and spindle base plates ourselves. The company we worked with was very accommodating and let us purchase these items ourselves ahead of time. We left the rest of the spindle, railing, and staircase demo and staining of the railings and stair treads to the company we hired.
The company we hired started work in mid June (they had ordered all of the materials and stained the necessary pieces to match our existing wood floors ahead of time) and finished everything up in a little over a week! It would have taken us months to finish this work. Like I said, it’s very important to know your DIY limits and know when it is best to hire professionals. Even just considering the time it would have taken us, the amount we spent was well worth the investment.
The Final Progress Product
Now what I’m sure you are wanting to see is what it all looks like now! After the work on the stairs, railings, and floors was completed we installed new door knobs (almost all of them at least), new door hinges, new base trim and painted the upstairs hallway, so the staircase and upstairs hallway project is soooo close to being done, but here she is in her current state.
As reminder this is where we started.
We are so happy with the transformation! While most of the big ticket items are completed, there are a few smaller things we want to do to finish the hallway.
What’s left?
- Repainting the upstairs hallway – Yes, you read that right. Currently the chair rail is the same white as our trim and the top half of the walls are Sherwin Williams Repose Gray at 50%. I am toying with the idea of either just going a little darker on the top half of the wall or switching it up and painting the chair rail a darker color and leaving the top half of the wall a lighter color. Something about the current situation doesn’t feel right to me, but the good thing is – it’s just paint! Easy enough (though kind of time consuming) to change.
- Finish installing door knobs and hinges upstairs
- Purchase and install flush mount lights in place of the can lights in the upstairs hallway
- Purchase a runner rug – I stole the runner from our entry for these pictures, but it’s not quite the right size for the hallway. I am thinking of a more muted colored vintage style rug.
- Hang art upstairs
Though the current state of our upstairs hallway is looking pretty good, I think these final changes will bring it to its full potential. As far as timing of when I hope to finish all of the changes – I am hoping in the next few months! We are also going to be tackling our upstairs bathroom soon so it would be nice to get both projects done around the same time.
Staircase and Railing Sources
In case you are thinking of a staircase makeover here’s a list of links to all the products we used for the staircase and railing project!
Phew, that was quite the post! I hope you enjoyed the update. Be sure to check back for upstairs hallway updates!
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