Staircase Top-Up

It’s time for an update!

My staircase is the most popular topic across all of my social media accounts so I will be sharing all the updates as I go, from what I decide to do to the landing to topping up the paint and keeping it clean and dust free - as much as I can!

It’s been eight months since I painted my staircase and whilst I had hoped that I wouldn’t have to to top up the paint so soon, I am not in the least bit surprised.

8 Months Ago

I had a little bit of a conundrum when I was planning my staircase project back in January. I had accepted a collaboration to paint the staircase with a well-known paint brand and it was all agreed that I would do the project and post about it on Instagram by the end of February.

"...after the bath renovation was complete I was going to paint the stairs"

Now, this should not have been a problem. I was due to have my bathroom renovation completed in February, so the idea of painting my staircase at the end of February, after all of the renovation had been completed, should have been fine. My plan was to do all of the prep work, so ripping up the carpet, taking out all the staples, the sanding, filling in the holes etc beforehand. Then after the bath renovation was complete I was going to paint the stairs.

That would make the most sense given that having renovation work done in a house is probably not going to be the best thing for freshly painted stairs. Especially given that the work entailed knocking down a wall which we knew was going to create a lot of dust.

"I was going to have to crack on with painting my staircase knowing full well that it was probably going to get a bit scuffed up..."

The problem came, however, when the bathroom work was delayed. It couldn’t have been helped, it’s just the way things have been throughout the pandemic with high demand, freight issues, Suez Canal blockages, which in turn created a huge backlog even after the blockage had been clearer... the list goes on.

The delay didn’t actually bother me, but it did mean that I was going to have to crack on with painting my staircase knowing full well that it was probably going to get a bit scuffed up, scratched and worn out after the bathroom renovation was completed.

In all honesty, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be but it did still need a fresh coat of paint. Especially because, in anticipation of this problem, I hadn’t actually used enough coats of paint in the first place. I decided at the time that if I needed to do another coat of paint in the near future, then I may as well only do the bare minimum required initially.

Eight months later

"under normal circumstances it wouldn’t require topping up quite as soon"

Fast forward to October and I have decided to paint the stairs. Thankfully, after a good thorough clean with sugar soap it turns out that it was only the black paint that needed topping up. The white paint cleaned up very well. So that halved my workload straight away and it is such a relief to know that the paint really does hold up very well! And under normal circumstances it wouldn’t require topping up quite as soon.

The black paint was a little bit worse for wear because it had the most traffic and unfortunately I had a picture frame fall from the wall and it created quite a few scratches as it bumped down each step - and it gave us a bit of a fright in the night!

My Top Tips

There’s not much to say here that I haven’t already covered in my other posts so if you want to have more details please see my DIY staircase blog post but you can also find all of my videos and details on my IGTV and Instagram highlights.

• After a thorough clean I allowed the steps to air dry and then I put a little bit of tape on every other stair to signify where to step whilst the paint dried. I recommend you do this to avoid being stuck upstairs or downstairs at any point!

• I didn’t bother using masking tape as I am pretty good with the cutting in brush but of course you can do that if you are not comfortable free painting.

• Finally, I worked my way down the steps so that I could sit on the steps as I painted.

All in all, it took me about half an hour to paint half of the steps followed by about three hours to dry. Then it was another 30 minutes for the other half of the steps and three hours to dry.

This was probably the easiest DIY job I’ve ever done!

And what a relief too! Now I won’t dread topping up the paint again in the future!