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Kitchen Stairs

May 14, 2015

HometoCottage.com Kitchen Stairs

 

In the kitchen of our 100 year old house, the family that lived there in the 1960’s closed off and removed part of the kitchen stairs to make room for more counter space.  When we recently renovated the kitchen we were thrilled to bring back the original stairway. Here’s the before, during and after of our kitchen stairs project…

Don’t you just love the feature of a front and back stairway? There is just something so wonderfully old fashioned about it. I guess because often times the back stairway would have been primarily used for servants, and who doesn’t love dreaming of those days? (Hello Downton Abbey!!)  I’m pretty sure that is what the back kitchen stairway in our 100 year old house was used for as well… it goes up to the 2nd story right next to the third story stairway, which leads to the attic where the original maid’s room is… (it’ll be fun to show you all that, but today, since this isn’t a book I’m writing, just a post, I’ll just talk about the kitchen stairway)

Here is what the kitchen looked like when we bought the house:

HometoCottage.com kitchen before renovation

It was renovated in the late 1960’s and they removed every bit of original woodwork, cabinetry and character out of the room, including closing off the back kitchen stairs by cutting off the bottom few steps and building a wall and installing a dishwasher in their place.

We took out that 1960’s cabinetry, donating them to the local ‘Restore‘, sold some of the appliances on Craigslist and  updated our rental with some of them, and finally gutted the entire kitchen to look like this:

HometoCottage.com kitchen gutted

 

That door at the far end of the room leads to the stairs down to garage and basement…

Just in front of it is where the old stairs had been chopped off…

HometoCottage.com stairway with bottom missing

So, standing directly in front of that area, you can see the still existing landing and then the void from the missing bottom steps.

Before we started renovating, from the 2nd story, you could start down the steps, turn at the landing, and bam! Stop! Because there was a wall where the stairway suddenly ended. But I am so, so, so glad when they were doing that previous kitchen renovation 40 or 50 years ago, that they did leave the top portion totally intact, or restoring the complete stairway would have been so much more difficult!

HometoCottage.com stairway rebuilt and sheetrock up

The stairway is a bit narrow, and we didn’t want it to feel even more narrow, so instead of a full wall, we only built a full wall just deep enough for the upper cabinets and then did a sloped pony wall, to be capped and used as a handrail.

The landing and upper treads were the original old wood, but for the treads on the new re-built part, our carpenter installed standard particle board treads since they were all going to be painted.

All the old original wide baseboard trim (actually 2 pieces layered together) of the top existing part of the stairway was there, but obviously missing on the bottom section… I really wanted to have that exact same trim on the newly built bottom treads, making the stairway look totally complete and original, but we didn’t have any more trim for it. It was a huge chore and a lot of searching to find one 2-piece set of trim that matched exactly. (I found it at a salvage yard in Minneapolis…. and it wasn’t cheap!)

All the trim got painted with white paint, after a light sanding, caulking, and priming. The floor and treads got light gray, (a heavy duty paint from Hirshfield’s) and the risers got a pale yellow, (the same yellow that I painted the beadboard backsplash in the kitchen)

HometoCottage.com kitchen stair colors

Then I wanted to try my hand at a tiny bit of stripe detail…

 

HometoCottage.com painted detail on treads

Since the stairs are so narrow, to do stripes on both sides was going to make them look even narrower, so I just painted them on one side.

HometoCottage.com one side striped on kitchen stairs

Boy, measuring, marking, taping and painting stripes on stairs is a very challenging project… I have a whole new respect for some of the fabulous painted stripes, (along with other amazingly creative treatments) I’ve been saving on my Pinterest board!

I wanted the stripes to look faded and worn off, so I lightly sanded the single coat of paint each stripe got, after they were dry.

 

HometoCottage.com Windmill pasta advertising poster

For the stairway wall facing the kitchen, I found this reproduction pasta ad… since I’m part Dutch, (hence the windmill) and my husband’s part Italian, (hence the pasta) and the colors of the poster were a perfect accent for the space, it was a fun addition to the pale gray wall.

So here are the kitchen stairs all finished:

HometoCottage.com Stairway finished!

And though we are long past the days of having servants treading up and down these steps, we all use them as much as the front steps. I couldn’t imagine the kitchen without them.

Thanks so much for stopping by! Please feel free to follow and share this blog with your friends, as well as on Facebook, Pinterest, Flipboard, Bloglovin, YouTube and now Instagram!  I appreciate you reading along.

This post is linked up at these other sites: I Should be Mopping the Floor, Uncommon Designs, Skip to My Lou, Between Naps on the Porch, Coastal Charm, My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia, StoneGable, Yesterday on Tuesday, A Stroll Thru Life, Tip Junkie, Home Stories A to Z, A Bowl Full of Lemons, Just a Girl and Her Blog, Savvy Southern Style, The DIY Dreamer, DIY by Design, From My Front Porch to Yours, Common Ground, Posed Perfection, My Repurposed Life, The Charm of Home, Joy in Our Home, Design, Dining & Diapers, Too Much Time on My Hands, French Country Cottage, My Romantic Home, The Shabby Nest, Thrifty Decor Chic

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Sherry says

    May 27, 2015 at 8:30 pm

    I like the stripes! Thanks for joining Home Sweet Home!

    Reply
  2. Gail (@repurposedlife) says

    May 27, 2015 at 7:45 pm

    How fun is that? I’ve always loved homes with back stairs. I think it’s so charming! you did a great job painting them, and I love how the artwork works so well with the stairs!

    gail

    Reply
    • LIz says

      May 28, 2015 at 9:20 am

      thanks Gail!

      Reply
  3. Shantel says

    May 18, 2015 at 9:33 am

    Wow It looks great!

    Reply
  4. Donnamae says

    May 14, 2015 at 8:55 am

    Another great job…lots of work…lots of detail…but, oh so worth it! 😉

    Reply
    • LIz says

      May 14, 2015 at 9:21 am

      Thank you so much Donnamae! You are always so encouraging.

      Reply

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