Just a small update

I hope you all had a wonderful and safe Fourth of July.  Our family certainly did - filled with friends, food, and fun!!  It was a wonderful day!!  Only down side was the extreme heat - we have been hitting way too many records here - record highs, record high lows, most days over 100 degrees in June - well you get where I am going with this.  Let's just say it is TOO HOT!!

The stairs are progressing - ever so slowly.  Fun seems to get in the way of working on them these days.  As I said the stain and varathane are on the newel post and the first portion of the handrail.  I love the color - dark walnut by minwax.  And the satin finish varathane has the perfect amount of shine for me.  I did 2 coats of stain and 4 of the varathane.   I will probably do one more coat once I have hte entire railing done



And if you look at the back you can see the primer on the baserail.  Woo Hoo.

Today after work - in addition to getting the rest of the cleaning up done after our impromptu cook out last night - I managed to get 2 coats of paint on 3 sides of the spindles that will go back on the first section of stairs.  I used Artist Canvas in the Behr with primer semi gloss.  It is the color in the laundry room on the cabinets, in the windowsills, and it is the crown molding in our dining room.  Hopefully before too long it will be the trim color throughput the house.



I think we have now bought every tool we could possibly need to remove the old treads.  We just bought

It is actually alot more powerful than I thought it would be.  We bought the sanding attachment to get in small places, a japenese type saw, and metal cutting blades to cut through some very stubborn nails and screws.  It has varaiable speeds, so I was able to teach grandson to sand with it on the lowest setting.  A 4 year old with a sander is a hilarious sight!!  And you get one very well sanded spot on a piece of wood.  Hey - it is what grandmothers are made for!!

Hope your DIY is going faster than mine!

Susan