Staining the Banister

This must be a week of “old posts”. Posts that have sat in my Drafts folder forever. This project was one of the first that we did to the house… way back in Christmas 2013. When we moved in, the banister to the stairs was a light oak and we thought that it would be nice with a dark stain instead. We had volunteered to have the staff (my work) Christmas party at our house and that seemed like the perfect “due date”  by which to accomplish the project. Here’s what it looked like when we bought the house.

I’m not going to go into the details of how I stained it because, truthfully, I was quite the beginner back then and didn’t completely use proper technique. Heck, even now, I’m not the greatest stainer and there are plenty of other (and better!) tutorials out there that you can follow for your next stain job. Essentially, it’s sand, stain, wipe off the excess, repeat until you reach desired hue.

Ok, let’s do some befores and afters… here it is before (at that point, we had painted the walls a yellowish beige)…

During… you can see how the bottom half is stained and the banister itself is still the original color.

And after!

Followed by a paint job (you can read all about that here) that highlighted that rich dark color even better…

And that’s the tale of the stained banister… I’m hoping to get a post out this afternoon for ya- a little outlet cover change up! Try to contain your excitement. 🙂 Hey, in all fairness… those little guys make a HUGE difference in the look of things. Can’t wait to show ya. Happy Saturday!