Are We Done Yet? Weekend Recap

No.  

The answer is no.

I hope that you enjoyed your weekend double for the Mr and I because it has been 8 days of non-stop work on this friggin' stair project in the style of one step forward, three steps back.  

source from the greatest movie ever that we need to watch again soon

Ahh, if only it went like the cha cha Chris...if only.

This is how things started off Friday.  The stringer was scraped and shellacked after me working every day last week to get things prepped.

Ol' Wreck It Ralph chonked out the bottom of the rail in three places and I was left to rebuild with wood filler.

Thankfully, I'm good at that but it's not easy and did not make for a happy girl before I saw the magic being relied on came through.  Lord knows the project betrays us on the daily, we don't need to help it along.

He removed the final old balusters on the bottom which left a loverly 8 layer mess for me to scrape.

I believe this sums it up best:

I was able to roll on the enamel paint on the stringer after two coats of shellac and one coat of primer.  Funny how smooth it looks until you open the door and get natural light blazing on it.  We keep the door closed 98% of the time so no worries.  😏

After being in a most painful floor troll position for 90 minutes, I at least got the bottom wood piece scraped and ready for the next phase.  Here's a before and after of the during process:

It was a lot of sanding, scraping, shellacking, priming and such and the Mr got to the baluster installation.  We are clearly no DIY show (except maybe Renovation Realities...RIP) so we only have YouTube and theories to go on.  The confidence in being able to drill a big ass hole into our stringer to put them in the old fashioned way was .001% and that's being generous.  You could find varying shoes for easier install but it would always require drilling one portion into the railing.  We did find these shoes that looked like they would do the job.  

They do the job and everything but as soon as you walk past them, of course the effing things rattle back and forth.  

source

So begins my search for a solution because God forbid the solution for one problem doesn't need a solution of it's own!  I ordered a 1/16" rubber sheet and felt tape to see if either of those were going to work for us or not and I'll give you one guess as to whether they did.

No.

No they didn't.  Sorry hon...back to the Big Orange Machine for you.

I had grand illusions that this was going to be able to be done this weekend but of course as you check the balusters (that are a year old), you see that basically every single one had a scratch or nick so what did I get to do?  Repaint them.  All of them.  Sometimes twice.  That takes an hour to dry.  Now this was fine when we were able to have the Mr measure and batch cut six at a time.  Then the farther we got, obviously, a problem presented itself where we had to do one at a time.

source

So this was my little idea that didn't fully work the way I wanted it to because, me but it got the job done for spray painting.

The other bane of my existence is this demon part on the ceiling.  See where the arrow is?

We had to add that.  I wood filled, attempted SO. MANY. TRIES to get it all level which is chronically pooping the bed over and over because we need that slab there for the install to be possible with these short rails at the top of the staircase.  It is utter madness but I had to prime and paint that part to get us ready to roll though now at a much slower pace with the rail distribution issues that were happening.

I mean we got a start...

...but it was nowhere near what I thought we were going to end on this weekend.  I stupidly thought if I pushed my body to the breaking point all day every day last week that the reward would be to be done with the baluster installation.  The Mr did a kick ass job but we could only go as far as the challenges would let us and I have a real issue with that because it makes me lose motivation.  We've also got a forced break coming up and I dread potentially feeling relaxed and then be thrown right back into chaos.  I knew this was going to be challenging for us but as history predicts, it's a bigger nightmare with crap you just can't even anticipate.  

Also, if you see the newel post up there, I've got a plan to totally chonk it up and add some character so even when the baluster portion and all touch ups are done, we still have that to contend with.  So yeah...a looooong way from done but I think we're giving ourselves today and tomorrow before we call an audible and attempt to clean the house because it's just friggin' overwhelming and crappy to look at.  If we're FINALLY at a point where construction dust shouldn't be an issue then it feels like we could green light that and maybe I could actually decorate for Fall which my soul desperately needs. 

Somehow in between there, I was able to squeeze out a few designs.  If you're in the mood for Fall, I've got you covered and yep, even a few Christmas/Black Friday designs.  There's a Labor Day special going on right now and it's one of the few times I can offer a discount.  So head on over if you need some retail therapy!

How was your weekend?

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