19 months and 3 new stairs

Can anybody else say that your husband can come home after playing hockey, whip up a brand new beautiful staircase in front of your eyes, give a concise biblical history of where Christianity/Islam/Judaism split (complete with verse references), and randomly belt out tunes from the Phantom of the Opera, all in one morning?!

Kyle is quite the renaissance man, and has taught me so much during our first 19 months of marriage. Plus, he lets me cut his hair, which is really fun.

Pre-hair cut, in the wife beater. Oh, yeah.

We wanted to update the railing, newel post, and balusters, since they were all a little worse for the wear and dingy. We also wanted to change the risers from natural to white, to add a little bit of architectural interest and go a little more formal in the living room. We got more than we bargained for when Kyle took the old railing out and realized that with the new newel post which was sized slightly differently than the old one, the existing baluster holes in the treads wouldn't work. Long story short, it was easier to replace the treads (so he thought at the time) than to fix the holes.

Preparing to attack the stairs

The old treads with filled baluster holes- never quite worked out how Kyle hoped

Buh bye, old stair treads.

Welcome, new treads and newel post!

Kyle put the edging on the stairs, stained, and added the first coat of poly.

Caution: wet stain. We have perfected the art of climing up to the top of the ladder and jumping to the landing to get upstairs.

Tonight he plans on drilling the holes for the new balusters, and sanding that nasty old trim on the wall. A former resident of the house had painted right over stained wood, so the old white paint is peeling off.

In other news, we finally received the correct thermostat for our heated tile floor in the upstairs bathroom. It is AWESOME! So nice to get up in the morning and walk onto a toasty warm floor. Thanks, Kyle for having that great idea and making it work! Thanks, also, for re-grouting the tiles where I spilled red nail polish a few weeks ago, and letting me off with just one warning never to do it again. That is why I love you.