extreme stair makeover.

this weekend we tackled the stairs in the house. in the middle pic you can see what the original linoleum looked like that was covering the stairs; it's still on the top stair and hallway in the photo. we were pleased to see that the treads all appeared to be in basically decent condition, which then led to the decision to refinish them instead of painting them or covering them with something. at this point, we're only going to refinish the treads, then we'll paint the risers and banister. maybe someday we'll refinish the whole thing, but the crunch is on to focus on getting the top two floors of the house ready to rent out to tenants. we just don't have the time to tackle all of that right now.
luckily, we had some help this weekend; robert c. came over and helped us disassemble and repair some of the stairs that had come out of the wall. it's amazing how much better they feel when you walk on them now...they no longer shift and creak (at least not as much). the flight going to the fourth floor were the worst, and a lot of them had to be redone.

the top pic is of cindy, stripping. the paint from the stairs. we're trying a number of different things to get the paint off as much as possible before we sand them. it's not the most fun job, and cindy got a few burns on her legs from the stripper. it's strong stuff.