Creating a beautiful life and home on a budget

traditional staircase design

I’m wee bit obsessed with stairs. When I was a first grader moving into a new home with my family, I remember my utter fascination with the stairs. I remember there were a few steps and then a landing and then a turn before you got to go up the rest of the staircase. I thought that was very cool. My obsession with design observation started early.

In another of our houses, we had TWO staircases going up to the next floor. One for fancy guests and one for the lowly family members. Oh, yeah, and we had an elevator that I rode in maybe once. I preferred the stairs. They were prettier.

And in my last house, we had three staircases, I was in stairway heaven. I could get a workout just running around my house. Remember my red stairs?

my stairway project, in process

In my current house we have one staircase (shown above in that horrid dark and blurry photo, I just snapped it real quick late at night so you could see it) and I am pretty much determined I’m going to make it entirely black and white, including the steps, once I get rid of the carpet.

So far, I painted (ok, my husband painted) the railing black. It was light orange oak. The carpet to black step transformation is going to be awhile.

Pay no attention the upper parts of the wall that are still painted that awful swine color. And notice there are no frames on the walls yet, this whole stairway needs some work, thus my inspiration photos today. I want a complete makeover complete with molding, black steps, photo frames and new lanterns. I don’t expect much, right?

When I ran across the stairway photo (the very top photo), which I found from Houzz, I squealed out loud because it was so much like the basic shape of my staircase and railing design. Minus the wood steps, the molding, the dark wood floors and the archway. But it could look KIND OF like that, someday.

Then when I saw THIS stair case and wainscoting from Sawdust & Paper Scraps (which I found from Today’s Creative Blog where all awesome blogs are discovered, lol), I was in complete stairway molding love. Molding everywhere, be still my heart. She did it herself too. Sigh. Why isn’t she my neighbor?

And after seeing the beautiful colors of frames on her wall above the stairs, I completely and totally heart her. I don’t think she even says on her blog what her name is, so I guess I’ll just call her Awesome, for short. Thanks Awesome for letting me drool over your staircase and frames.

That is all.

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