Renovation Project - The stairs are nearly finished

Renovation Project - The stairs are nearly finished 

The kitchen is in and last night I made dinner with such ease, though it was really strange to go into different cupboards to get what we needed. We have also got a lot more kitchen items, one of our new friends has left to go back to the UK and we have taken a box load of kitchen items that she no longer required.

I have cooking utensils (still no knives and forks but hey you can’t have everything!)

We are now going to leave the kitchen for a while and go back to the stairs, I have scraped them all and cleaned the old varnish off with wire wool, this was such a dirty horrible job but at least it is now finished.

The stairs are not in as good condition as we had hoped they would be and there had been a lot of woodworm damage.

The newel post is beyond repair and part of the rake leading to the newel post will need to be replaced.

The side of the stairs that John made is still not fully secure, we had an old oak beam that we had intended to put into place to secure it but unfortunately there is too much rot in it, John makes a trip to a timber merchant that we have been told about and returns with a new beam, he has also bought a new newel post as well.

We have great fun fitting the oak beam, john has measured where it needs to go in the ceiling and cut a square out of the plaster board, next we have to manoeuvre the beam into place. We hold it on a slant then John has to wedge it in to the hole as I push it from the bottom (this is so big and heavy!!!!!) and reminds me of the old push me, pull me story.

It goes in, still very slanted but it is in place, John now has to shuffle it in to place, it works, the beam is in, the ceiling isn’t damaged and the beam looks fantastic. John secures it to the floor and then secures the new side to the beam, I love it, it makes the entire room look so different.

The newel post is far too big and needs to be cut to size; John also has to chamfer the edge (now there’s a word of the day! This is where the edge is bevelled so that it matches the other parts of the stair case).

Once this is in, the bottom bit of the rake has to be removed, John splices a new piece into place this will mean once it is varnished you will not see where the repair has taken place,

The stairs are all fully treated with a preventative and preservative treatment, if any of those bloody worms are still there, they’re not now!!!!!!

The stairs just need a stain and coat of varnish now, we did have a discussion about how much they should be sanded as John wanted them to look like new, I do not, I want them to look like the original stairs and as though they have been there for a couple of hundred years.