Farmhouse Stair Renovation- Part 2

The stairs have taken on a whole new form with the addition of the newel posts, balusters, and railings!  With a new crawler in the house, we are very excited and relieved to finally have our railings up.  And now the Laird can sleep more peacefully.  We hired a carpenter for this job, and he finished the job in 6 hours!

Check out Part 1 of the renovation to see the entire process.
Farmhouse Stair Renovation- Part 1

We purchased unfinished square Newel Posts and a traditional shaped railing- all Red Oak.
Preparation steps:
1)  Sand with grit #220 paper
2)  3 coats stain- Miniwax Provincial
3)  2 coats semi-gloss polyurethane- lightly sanded between each coat.

(All parts of our stairs were ordered through Morse Sash & Door)

It was necessary to add a support beam, in place of the wall that was removed.  We stained and polyurethaned 4 unfinished 1 x 8 boards to wrap the support beam.  The balusters came primed, and we painted them an off white to match the risers and stringers.  They are a simple style with square ends.

The stair renovation drastically improved the look and function of the stairs.  Unfortunately we lost a very large upstairs hall closet, and were seriously lacking in storage.  Though we lost one closet, we gained storage space under the stairs with a new closet.  We also re purposed one of the upper kitchen cabinets to be a linen cabinet (bordering the stairs on the landing) to make up for the lost closet upstairs.  That is one thing about old houses, they don't have nearly enough closets or storage space. More details on re purposing the linen cabinet to come in a future post!

Original stairs

Almost finished Stairs

The final tasks: to install flooring on the landing & Trim- hopefully within the next few weeks.  In the future, my hope is to wainscot the wall leading up the stairs.