Stairs

A little while back (err, a month or more ago...), Andrea from Litter Box House asked me about (1) my stairs and (2) how/what/why we were seeding between our flagstone paths and patio. Since I'm feeling guilty for not posting in a week, I thought I'd indulge her stair obsession. So here's a short photo tour of stairs and grass.

So here's the grass in the patio before Ben whacked it last weekend. In the far corner we are attempting to grow some Irish Moss. When it's not eleventy billion degrees outside, it looks like its doing quite well, but it's a little stressed out lately (aren't we all...). We would have done it all in moss, but that would have cost a lot of money. A lot. So instead the rest is done in regular old grass. It's filling in nicely for the most part, and is fun to walk on. I have been thinking lately that creeping thyme would have been a cool thing to plant here, too.

We thought we'd be able to just mow it, but it turns out the mowing deck is a little high for that, even at its lowest setting. The weedwacker isn't bad, but it can be uneven. I had fun trimming it with hedge shears the other night while we were grilling. Didn't take too long.

On to the stairs...

Here is the main stairwell. (All of these pictures turned out funky because our digicam can't handle its own flash. When you come in the front door, the stairs are to your right. In this picture you can spot the following:

• pretty wooden stairs (I'll give credit where it's due)

• -hideous cottage cheese stucco gross shiny walls (it's a pet peeve)

• beige.

• damage to the bottom stair

• but a pretty newel post!

Let's look a the pretty newel post some more:

....nice.



And here is the side of the stairway (do the panels on the side of the stairs have a special name?). This is quite pretty too, except for the parts where you can peer through the floor into the basement...
oof, we need to refinish the floors.

I did not include the picture from the top of the stairs looking down because there are three suspicious dust-mote-spots in it and I don't need a whole bunch of comments telling me that they're ghost orbs. Lord knows I'm neurotic enough about spooky things and don't need to get all freaky-deak about dust spots. They're just dust spots. Dust spots.


Ahem. So here we are at the top of the stairs, winding the bend to the second floor. I should dust.

And if I turn around, here are the Cosby stairs that go down to the kitchen. And more ugly walls! Going down these stairs feels like walking through stucco catacombs. I try to focus on how pretty the wood on these stairs is. It's different from the main stairs, not as fancy, but I like it. You can kind of see the difference between the landing and that first step. I'm not crazy about that shade of blue. It's a little too country crafts or something. I don't think I want to strip this wood, but I'm not sure what color to repaint either. We are not good at choosing colors.

So these are the best of the bunch of photos I have. Does that satisfy you, Andrea? Do you even remember asking these questions?