The Staircase

Way back in May Rich and I took great pleasure in ripping out the old smelly carpet from our stairs, well on Saturday afternoon I finally go round to finishing off what we started. With the help of my Mum we had given the stairs a coat of white undercoat to kill off the horrid toffee colour about a month ago. We decided to go with a satin white for the top coat as it would help brighten what is quite a dark corner of the house.

We then ran into a problem, we both wanted a stair running, nearly 4 months of trotting up and down stairs with no carpet is quite loud. Unfortunally we have no pennies left for a runner or anyone to fit it properly, so much to Rich's delight I suggested using rugs. I'm not the first to do this by a long shot but having had a little look online I was sure we could cobble something together that would look nice and do the job.

At 4pm last Saturday afternoon off I went with a pile of cheap rugs and a staple gun...

I'm pretty damned chuffed with the result!

Why I chose a rug with stripes in when our stairs dog-legs at the top I don't know but I managed to make it work, each of the different strips in a separate rug, and unbelievably they only cost £7.50 each.

Next on the list is to strip the handrail back to pine and wax it.

The whole thing cost around £60, I am on the look out for some old brass stair rods to help keep it all in place but the staples are holding up really well so far. Ok the rugs may not last years, I may have to redo it in 18 months when they fray and fall apart but I was sick of staring at yet another unfinished project, its totally worth £60 for how happy these coloured stripes make me every morning when I see them!