renovation | Hicks House

This is sort of an addendum to the post on the trim in the condo Read That Post Here since the stairs we a much bigger undertaking than the nice straight trim over tile and hardwood… It warranted it’s own post.

The first thing to do in order to prep for the job was to make sure it was adequately taped – top and bottom. The top is easy enough, its nice and straight although on an angle. It’s the bottom on the carpet that is the challenge. Here’s the nifty little trick on how to move the carpet out of the way:

Use a paint scraper to push the tape down into the gap between the trim and carpet

You’ll notice I am using masking tape… DO NOT USE MASKING TAPE! Learn from my mistake and pay the extra money for painters tape. There is a reason painters tape is more expensive, because paint doesn’t stick to it! Ingenious I know. As you can probably tell the masking tape was a pain and a half to remove and took a good chunk of the paint with it. I have learned my lesson.

All taped up and ready to paint!

Once its fully taped you just get to painting it making sure to push the brush down into the grove you taped down to paint as close to the carpet as possible. I started on the right side of the stairs, and since I’m right handed it went pretty nice and smooth and I was starting to think maybe this project wasn’t going to be as bad as I thought…

First coat on the right side

At this point I was feeling pretty good about myself and jumped right into the left side. It was every bit the nightmare I anticipated this project to be. Right handed people are just not meant to paint the left side of stairs, it’s like cruel and unusual punishment. I probably should have started at the top and worked my way down, rather than working up then the angle would have been slightly better.

It takes 3 coats to get the right amount of coverage to actually look nice, so this was weekend two weeks in a row. 🙂

I think it was worth it, it makes the walls stand out so much more and looks clean and modern. What do you think:

White stair trim

Due to the fact that we bought the completed house from the builder we were able to negotiate some unusual things into our contract, and one of those things was replacing the Formica counter tops that were already in the kitchen with granite.

What we didn’t anticipate was the large decision that this was going to entail which set off “The Great Granite Debate!” Of all the finishing touches throughout the home, the cabinets and counter tops are most likely the most permanent features in the home. They are the most expensive and time consuming to change out later, so whatever decision we went with we knew we had to love it for a long long looong time, as these counters are here for the long haul.

So off we went to Classic Stone in Plantsville CT. All of the research we did online suggested bringing a drawer front or something from the kitchen to help you pick a granite color that best compliments your cabinets. Since we do not technically own the cabinets yet this was not an option, so we had to wing it.

Another part of the conundrum the cabinets are not the color we’d always envisioned so the granite I had in my mind didn’t jive with the existing cabinets. Had we started from ground zero and built this house from the ground up I would have gone with a much darker cabinet. But the cabinets we have are a glazed maple (shown in the photos) that have a darker coloring within the grooves of the door than on the flat surface, and we want to compliment them the best we can.

We were however able to narrow it down to three options and bring samples to the house to compare to actual granite. Let me know your favorite (I apologize for the horrendous quality of these photographs, the granite was extremely reflective and I’m a bad photographer)