I eased into summer mode this week with a small project to transform my stairs from carpet covered to wood. Eventually I'll be replacing all the floors upstairs but Jim would like me to wait until he moves out and with Monika moving in in the fall, I'll wait to have her here to help. But with him working at Ft. McCoy this week, I decided to use the time to accomplish something. I spent one day removing the carpet and cleaning the steps. I went to Menards to figure out what my options were. I knew that replacing the steps (which was what I did to the basement steps) would be difficult without help. Menards had oak kits made to cover steps that were a lot cheaper (since they were so much thinner) which was just what I needed. I used a Gorilla glue adhesive with a couple of flooring nails to secure the steps and topped the wood off with a clear poly coat. I had originally thought about painting the risers white and staining the tops (like I did with Jessi's stairs) but decided to hold off since I'm still not sure what flooring I'm going to go with upstairs. The whole project cost less than $500. Replacing my basement steps with pine several years ago cost nearly twice that.
The whole project did not take as much time as I expected and offered me plenty of time for yoga and swimming this week. Luckily the weather cooled off a bit so I could turn off the air conditioner while Jim was gone. I am hoping to accomplish 1 project each week this summer (10 total). We'll see how that plan goes.
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