Day Five-sixteen: building a stairway...

Ok, maybe we aren't as ambitious as the lady in that old Led Zeppelin song, but we've finally finished the dozen or so stairs from the kitchen down to the side door and basement. 

They're now a nice chocolate brown with several coats of Bona Mega to protect the finish (that's the same thing we have on the original white oak floors on the main level). Add a couple of nice subtle floor mats and the whole effect is quite striking.

Technically this isn't the first time we've declared this project completed. As with a few (ok, maybe a lot) of our projects this has been a case of trial and error. But c'mon, look what we had to work with. Yes, those dark parts are ancient stains.

Underneath was some painted hardwood that was almost improved by adding the carpet.

So we had our first contractor crew cover the stairs with beautiful maple treads stained clear and plywood risers that we painted white.

Unfortunately during the installation they marred the maple by putting the holding screws all over the place and using buckets of wood putty to cover their messy tracks.

Unwilling to live with this substandard work, we took it upon ourselves to remove the treads and risers with a view to reinstalling them with screws placed at uniform distances and putting slices of wooden dowels over the screws.

We started with the couple steps to the kitchen and found this to be a bear of a job. The maple and underlying wood were so hard that we could only extract the 3-inch screws (yes, serious overkill by those first contractors) by drilling through them, burning through 3 or 4 drill bits. We also tore big holes in the treads trying to get at the screws.

With our first plan stymied we went to plan B (or C)--we would put new oak treads on these top stairs, replace the maple landing with unfinished oak, put in maple plywood risers, sand the finish off the lower stairs, and go with paint.

And that's the story of how we did, redid, and redid our stairs.