Quick and Easy Budget Upgrades. Youve seen the ominous signs of aging caulk. First it was the brown tinge along the edges. Now its smooth and supple skin has turned brittle and cracked, opening the way for stubborn colonies of mildew to take hold, or for water to seep through and turn wallboard and framing mushy. Update your staircase with this stepbystep tutorial to turn dated wood staircases into rich, updated masterpieces. Vinyl siding comes in a variety of grains, thickness and colors making it also a practical choice for many homeowners. Install vinyl siding with our easy guide. Anita, that runner is really accurate in the pics. Its definitely cream and kahki and not white. I thought from the Overstock pic that the stripe was going to be. Web portal for buildingrelated information with a whole building focus provided by the National Institute of Building Sciences. Areas include Design Guidance. Whether its around your sink, between a tub and its tile surround, or covering the joints of your shower stall it has got to go. Fortunately, caulk is cheap, and applying it isnt difficult. All you need is an hour, a few common tools, and materials easily found at any hardware store. But as easy as it is, you still have to do it right, or youll be caulking again next year, says This Old House general contractor Tom Silva. Cost About 1. 0. See How to Caulk Around a Tub for full step by step instructions. How to refinish and update wood stair railings. Come on friends its time to take a little journey. I wish we were going on a classic road trip, complete with car dancing, crazy wind blown hair and more Mike and Ikes than one digestive system is equipped to handle, but its not that kind of trip were headed down memory lane, buds. By the way, Im fully aware that in normal life, my singing voice sounds like a dying cat who might also be mating, but is definitely suffering in some way. But Im convinced that theres a magical phenomenon that happens on road trips maybe the acoustics of the vehicle and the blaring volume of the music that morphs my voice into something like Adeles temporarily. Anyone else become a beautiful vocalist at 7. MPHANYWAY. Memory lane. When we bought our house, the entryway looked like this And, as I mentioned in this post where I showed you all our befores and afters, we changed the railings to look like this shortly after we moved in Ive gotten soooo many questions about how we stained the railings and replaced the balusters with iron, so Im finally, finally sharing how we did it. Its a simple, inexpensive change with a big ol honkin impact my favorite kind of update This project has two parts 1. Improve the look and function of your home without spending an arm and a leg. Stain the railings. Which Ill tell you about right this very minute. Add the iron balusters. Edit Article wiki How to Carpet Stairs. Four Parts Making Preparations Installing Tackless Strips Setting the Carpet Padding Laying the Carpet Runner. See how to do that right hereFirst a caveat. We did this project pre blogging, so Im workin with the photos I can track down from the abyss of our hard drive, and recreating the stain process on a random scrap of wood so I can show you how it works. IMG_7819.jpg' alt='How To Install A Stair Runner Without Nails' title='How To Install A Stair Runner Without Nails' />Were going to have to play make believe, just a smidge. Materials Youll Need Wood stripper. I used Citristrip. Its a little safer and less fumey than normal stripper, but its also a little less magical because it doesnt bubble. Since were not moving the railings outside to stain them, its probably smarter to use something safer indoors. Refinishing gloves. YES. You need them. Property And Casualty Insurance License Ct Dmv. Signed your mom. I used these 3. M Tekk gloves. Wood stain. I used this Minwax Dark Walnut. Polyurethane. This is what I used. Scouring pad or steel wool. Paintbrush andor foam brush. An old, crappy brush is perfectPlastic scrapers, like these. Mineral Spirits like this. Paper towels andor rags. These links all take you to my affiliate shop. Remove the balusters. First we gotta bust out the white wooden balusters If youre trying to save the white wooden balusters to reuse them, go this route Holding one hand at the top of the baluster and the other hand at the bottom, slooooooowly twist the baluster until it loosens the nail holding it in, then lift it up and out of the railing. You MIGHT be able to save a few of them, but be prepared for many of them to break. But if you know youre replacing the balusters, go with our method UNAPOLOGETIC DESTRUCTIONJust wiggle the balusters up and down, or saw them in half with something sharp and power tooly, until they break and you can pull them out of the railings. Once you take them all out, reach in the holes where the balusters used to be and make sure there arent any lingering nails. If there are, just tug em out with needle nose pliers. Protect the walls and floor. Use painters tape andor newspaper to cover the walls where the railings meet the wall, so you dont get any stain on the walls. MIGHT want to protect the floors too, if youre an impatient, messy DIYer. Join. The. Club. 3. Strip the existing finish. Adios, honey oak Your days are over Pour some of the Citristrip into a metal container and brush it all over the wooden railings. Remember when I said we were going to play make believe since I dont have photos from when we actually did this project Pretend this honey oak stained piece of wood is a railing. We did this whole process without removing the railing, so pretend like this whole process was done inside, on the installed railings. After youve brushed the stripper all over the wooden railings, let it sit. With this particular stripper, you can let it sit between 3. After about 5 hours, our pretend railing had turned a milky pink white like this If you used a more chemically, intense stripper, the finish would be bubbling up, which is incredibly fun and satisfying. So you will need to weigh that in your stripper purchasing decision. Immature snicker. After somewhere between 3. Scrape a little bit of the stripper away and see if the finish comes off with it. If it removes the shiny finish to reveal the raw wood beneath, youre good to go. If not, let it sit a while longer. Once I knew it was ready, I used my plastic scraper to scrape the finish away. It worked okay, but I also tried a metal scraper. The metal was speedy and fun, but it also removed a little bit of the wood and created splinters if I got a little crazy with it, as I am known to do. Once youve removed the finish from the main parts of the railings, youll need to get in all those crevices. A scouring pad is perfect for the detailed portions of your railings that are a little harder to get with a flat scraper. The goal here is to remove the stripper and the shiny finish on the wood so you see the raw wood. Once you have it all the way off, go over it with a piece of sandpaper. We just used 1. 80 grit sandpaper and did a very quick once over by hand with a loose sheet of sandpaper to smooth out any imperfections. Then just wipe it all down with a paper towel and mineral spirits, to clean it and reveal the luscious raw wood underneath Now youre all set to stainLook at you go 4. Stain that junk SO EASY. Stir your stain with a paint stick, then dip a paper towel or scrap rag in the stain and rub it onto the wood in the direction of the grain. The way I just said that sounds like its a careful, methodical procedure, but its not. Its messy and its simple and you can hardly mess it up, promise. NOTE Wood stain is VERY thin, so if youre in a spot where drippy stain will ruin your floors, go with a gel stain instead. Its a little thicker and wont be so watery. Do the staining process in sections so you can keep the color consistent. Do one section, let it sit, then wipe off the excess stain with a dry rag. The longer you leave it, the darker the final finish will be. I think we left it about five minutes to get to this color. Make sure you keep track of how long you let the stain sit on the first section before wiping, because youll need to try to be pretty consistent. If its not dark enough the first time, reapply the stain, let it sit, and wipe it off again. We did two coats on our railings. Let it dry about 2. Add Polyurethane. Once the stain is dry and youre happy with the color, brush on some polyurethane to protect the finish and make it shiny and glorious. This is the shininess we got after one coat of Polyurethane. If youre trying to be an overachiever and get that super SUPER glossy finish, you can lightly run some sandpaper over it and add another coat of polyurethane. Thats all Its really a straightforward job and it makes a huuuuge difference. The hardest part is definitely scraping off the stripper, but you can do it. Just pop on some Adele and pretend youre halfway to the beach, and youll be done before you know it. At this point your railings should look kinda like this, with sad little holes where the balusters belong. Bare hanging light bulb optional.