I mentioned in an earlier post that we were having some work done on our stairs and in our upstairs hallway. This is a new house, but when we were finishing it, we decided to go with a carpeted hallway, landing, and stairs. After living in the house for 2 years, it was one of those things that I knew we had to change, and I am so very happy we did! I think waiting, and not making these changes when we first built saved us a lot of money too!
All carpet was removed from the stairs and replaced with “stair carpet”, or a more durable carpet than what we have in the bedrooms. So many stair carpet choices are way too ornate for my taste. We ended up with a neutral shade with a pattern to give it some interest. The hardwoods and railing are very dark, so I wanted to keep the carpet light for contrast. Even though the carpet is light, it is very durable, and we haven’t had any issues. We are very careful about not wearing shoes upstairs, which seems to make it much easier to keep clean, etc.
We chose to continue the same hardwoods from the first floor onto the stair landing and upstairs hallway. The wood is rustic maple. The stain color is a 50/50 cut of Ebony and Special Walnut (SW stain colors). We also had the flooring guys come back three different times to put an oil based sealer on the floors. This creates a shiny, almost glassy look, on the floors, which we love on the first floor. It is so durable and after two years, our floors still look as shiny as ever. I highly recommend the headache of having this done (you can’t walk on the floors for 12 hours after this is applied, so we slept downstairs 3 different nights)!
Here is the maple installed before the stain and sealer.
And completed…
For what we paid, this change has made SUCH a difference. I’m not a carpet person, and if we stay here for a really long time, I would like to hardwood the entire house and have large rugs underneath beds, etc. For now, this small change is making me very happy!
I love the look of the dark hardwoods against the light paint color. As with our hardwoods on the first floor, I clean them by sweeping up any dust/debris, and then I use a wet cloth to clean, and a dry cloth to dry/shine.
I touched up the paint in the hallway last week, so I can start thinking about getting some stuff hung in this hallway – finally!