80’s Oakin’ to 20’s Smokin’ — Stair Railing Makeover

I made a grave error in the sweet early days of spring 2020: I was scrolling Pinterest with reckless abandon and saw a before-and-after photo duo of a painted stair railing. When I least expected it, I heard inspiration whispering sweet nothings in my ear: “It won’t be that bad,” she coaxed, “we’ll just do it one bit at a time. I know a good podcast to listen to. Just buy the supplies.” I amazon-ed faster than my good sense had a chance to talk me out of it. I didn’t know it at the time, but I’d just started a grueling endurance project known as a “stairway makeover” that I’d be working on for the next year and a half. 🤣

When we first bought the house and covered up the Skittles colored walls, we decided not to do the stair balusters and railings for some reason I’ll never know, but the oak haunted me daily. Although it was a long process, this project made a HUGE impact in the look and feel of our home.

So here’s the basic method: Quick sanding, wipe with tack cloth, tape, 3 coats of General Finishes Java Gel Stain, remove tape, tape the balusters, prime balusters, 3 coats of baluster paint, quit. It’s like I only heard the “quick sanding” part and thought to myself, “Well, if it only has to be a quick sanding, the project won’t be so bad. As long as I don’t have to really sand much.” 🤦‍♀️

We have Juliet Balcony so I started there and used it to work out all the kinks in my process since it’s a zero-traffic area and guests can only see it from the floor below.

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I started out way too fancy and definitely did not keep it simple. On the balcony, I stained the underside of the top railing dark as well as the bottom piece of wood to match the top railing, but that was a LOT of extra taping and extra detail work, and the results were pretty messy at the joints. But hey, since this was an extended-timeline project, I had all the time in the world to Google solutions and Exacto-scrape some of the most egregious errors away. (Not something I wanted to have to do for the entire stairway!)

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Next, I wanted to feel like I was getting stuff done, so I tackled the mini railing with a revised process: paint the bottom rail and the underside of the top handrail white. So for the remaining railings, I only stained the top potion of the handrail and the newel posts. If you’re thinking about taking this project on, I highly recommend this method. It’s much faster, looks so much cleaner, and requires less tape.

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Speaking of tape, did I mention, USE FROG TAPE? 🙃 Spend your time on the taping steps, since it really pays dividends.

I put on 3 coats of the Java Gel Stain by General Finishes. This stuff is pure genius. You don’t have to worry about the usual stain splatters and drips of typical stain because this is a gel. It’s thick and goes on more like paint than like stain, but you can still see the wood grain through it. I absolutely loved using it and am already thinking about other places (ahem, kitchen cabinets, I’m lookin’ at you) to put it to use.

At this point I was 5 months into the project. Just “slightly longer” than I thought it would take. So I kept moving right along and got the whole stair railing and balusters all taped up. And then we lived in Frog-Tape Stair Decor for 1 full year. The whole project just stopped. I started and finished multiple other projects, but those darn stairs, I would not touch.

I read in a blog once that the best way to finish a project is not to give yourself a deadline or make a schedule—no—it’s to plan a party and invite people to come to your house. This year we decided to host Thanksgiving at our house and it was just the kick in the tushy I needed. Three weeks before Thanksgiving my sweet temptress inspiration was whispering in my ear again: “Let’s tackle this. I still know some good podcasts to listen to.” So, on top of planning and pulling off Thanksgiving, I was also up late painting and staining and taping, oh my. I squeaked in right before guests arrived: Thanksgiving, morning I opened up the white can of paint one last time and touched up some of the balusters. The ordeal was over! I had climbed Mount Everest and lived to tell the tale.

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My dad was impressed. My mom was delighted. My kids were apathetic. My husband was relieved. But my brother. As we stood looking up—I was beaming about my ridiculously stretched-out accomplishment—he chuckled and said it looked like the balusters could use another coat or two of paint and asked if I was going to do that. By the grace of God I laughed in response to that question: No frigging way!