My Stairway Got Hit With The Ugly Stick!

My house has two sets of stairs. One is quite nice looking and is in the front entry. The stair treads are wood and there’s a chandelier, and blah, blah, blah.

The only picture I could find was a Christmas one. Sorry!

You can even see my old white blinds in the family room in the picture above. Anyway, I don’t use the front stairs very often. And that’s because we share our house with two giant, furry beasts. And I don’t want their big paws with sharp nails going up and down those wood stairs. This guy in particular can be a real problem:

Mr. Darcy likes to be wherever the action is.

He pretty much follows me around all day. And even though I don’t use those stairs, he has started to at least once a day. Whenever I talk to him about it, I imagine him thinking, Whatever lady! I’m older than you! I can do what I want!

I use this stairway, off of the kitchen:

The window and one of the light fixtures in the back stairway. A definite case of the uglies!

We have been looking at those ugly window treatments and those ick light fixtures for a year and a half. This weekend we finally did something about it! Here is an in progress photo:

New light fixture up, old window treatments down, old holes filled and painted!

Here’s another photo, so you can see how brave the husband was to change a light fixture in a stairwell:

The husband was less than enthused about this chore. 🙂

If you would like to know just annoyed the husband was about changing the lights out, read this.

Here is the after:

Done! This makes me so happy!

And here’s what it looks like with the blind down:

We did get the privacy liner - blocks 40% of light

So that was our mini-facelift of the stairway. You can see that window on the landing from the kitchen. So, that’s probably one of the reasons it bothered me so much. Here is the cost breakdown of our project:

quart of paint: $9.26
foam brush: $.57
new cordless drill: $49.97
2 light fixtures @ $19.97 ea.: $39.94
woven wood blind w/ privacy liner: $196.95
Total: $296.69

I need to point out here, that because of generous gift cards from my father (Christmas & birthday), we were only out of pocket $42.00. Thanks Dad! And if we had forgone the privacy liner, we would not have been out of pocket at all. This project could of course be done even cheaper by using the woven wood blinds you find at discount and home improvement stores. I chose to order mine from Blinds.com because I knew they had a color which closely matched the cabinets in my kitchen. There is cabinetry in the same sight line as the blind from the kitchen. Also, I chose to order one big blind to cover two windows and to cheat it up towards the ceiling to make it look bigger. That is the one characteristic of the old window treatments that I did like.

I know it’s not the most glamorous change, but I really hated those valances and brass lights. This is so much better. And I appreciate not having my senses assaulted 20 times a day as I go up and down the stairs!

It’s Monday! That means I’m linking this post to Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps On The Porch. Check it out!