Our Dream Stairs; Before & After

It was love at first sight. I'd never experienced this phenomenon in the world of home interiors until these stairs came along, and I'm not even sure how to describe our reaction to seeing them via photo for the first time. If I had to sum it up in three words, I think jaw-dropping fabulous would do it. Check out these "before" and "after" shots.

Front staircase

 

Wow- right?! Let me just start by saying that Thane and I did not do this little job ourselves, our fantastic builder Jason did. And thank goodness, we could never have pulled this off, especially not on our first attempt at stair flooring. (So this one can't exactly go into the same category as the rest of our DIY projects.)

As you can see, the footers are the same bamboo planks that we have throughout the rest of the house, and the yummy chocolate colored risers and trim are espresso-stained maple. I wasn't originally very excited about the prospect of our stairs, because instead of ordering solid footers for the steps we decided to use the plank flooring we already had. So, instead of having one big solid piece of bamboo for each step, it would be individual planks "patched" together. It seemed kind of hokey to me and I was less than excited about it, but it would save us a lot of money since solid footers would have been a custom order. And since we have not one, but two staircases, that would naturally double the normal cost of this kind of thing.

Great Room staircase



So how did we go from the prospect of patchy, quilty, cheesy looking plank stairs to these decidedly fabulous ones we got in the end? Just a spur of the moment idea during a meeting with our builder where I thought it would be nice for the risers to match the espresso cabinets of our kitchen. I never knew that such a simple idea could produce such fantastic results- mostly due to Jason's expertise of course. When I thought about the espresso risers, I didn't envision the trim he added. But it adds such a bold, contemporary element. Being that these staircases are so eye catching, I think they'll set the style of the rest of the house. Fine with us! Thane and I are truly blown away, and we haven't even seen these babies in person!

Hi Momma!

Notice the edges of these top steps, how a light piece of bamboo frames out the darker pieces. There are two obvious words for this; love it! Just another one of Jason's special touches. I probably would have been way too afraid to try that had we done it ourselves, but this goes to show you that sometimes it's best to let the professionals do their thang.  



Now we just need banisters... We'll likely install those ourselves, along with the kitchen cabinets that we plan to order soon. So, stay tuned over these next months, there's plenty more to come!