I Did It...I Painted My Stairs Black!

So my stairs finally got painted...and wow, what a transformation!

I know I say this all the time, but I can't believe what a difference a little bit of paint makes. 

This was a pre-owned home so unfortunately we weren't able to choose any of the finishes.   When we first moved in I painted the railings a dark grey (Iron Mountain by Ben Moore) to make them a little more bearable (see below).   The light floors and railings wouldn't have been my first choice, but I was very grateful for the hardwood.  Also, the stairs had beige carpet running up the middle of them (yikes), which over time was starting to look a bit nasty.  

I delayed taking up the carpet because sometimes builders cheat the hardwood on stairs to cut costs, and put a cheaper wood where the carpet is.  Fortunately, we had hardwood all the way up...whew!   The next challenge was taking all of the staples out of the stairs.  This next step took a really long time and it was a lot of hard work.  Let's just say that the guy that had the staple gun went a little crazy...some stairs had over 20 staples. .

Next I had to choose paint, and had heard about Fusion Mineral Paint on Instagram from The Learner Observer.  I saw that she was painting her stairs with Fusion Mineral Paint, and she was nice enough to answer all my questions.  This paint is used mainly on furniture so it was great to see it used on stairs.  The good thing is it really adheres to rough surfaces and goes on smoothly...so no brush strokes.  Also, it's not very thick and is very runny so a little goes a long way...one small jar did the railings and stairs.   I wanted the colour to be an off-black so I mixed equal parts Ash (dark grey) and Coal Black (very black) until I got the colour I wanted.

My original thought was to paint them all black and then I decided I liked the look of the light stairs and the dark risers...oops!...(like a really big oops!.. like run

 to your neighbours' house as fast as you can and borrow their sander oops)!  The last step, once they were sanded, was putting  a light coat of sealer on them.

Before

Ok so here's the before and after...keep in mind that the before is quite a 

few years ago...big difference!

After

I just realized that I've never really shown this front room's before and after pics...probably because it changes every week....before and after pics coming soon.  

Also, I really want to try another project with this Fusion Mineral Paint.  I'll give you a hint...it has to do with the bathroom but it's not the vanity.  Can you guess what it is?