Stairway: From Pink to Painted

Do you know how looooong I have wanted the PINK carpet removed from the basement stairs?
Yeah, that long.

Why do we only start doing when there is a possibility of a move? We are then “doing” for someone else to enjoy?!

Finally, we are “doing” for us…okay, and for a pending “SALE” sign in the yard. Not soon, but sometime. Isn’t is sort of fun to look at your own home with “buyer” eyes, pretending to see what a buyer would see? Yep. It is. And daunting, and scary, and sometimes overwhelming.

After living, and I mean LIVING in this kid-raising sort of house for the past 27 years, it is cathartic to purge and freshen and let go. Our house did such a wonderful job of nurturing our kids as they grew to adults. My grown son even wants to buy the house, he still loves it so. We gently told him to forge his own way and create new memories in another house (that he might be able to afford.)

Oh! Back to the PINK carpet! Years ago I asked hubby if he thought it would be nice to just remove the PINK carpet, and go with painting the wood. He wanted to keep that dang carpet, because he thought the wood would be loud with my son pounding up and down it at all hours. And so it stayed. And stayed. The rest of the carpet was removed a couple of years ago, to add fresh vinyl, eventually. (The vinyl is now ordered!) It is a basement, after all. BUT, the PINK carpet remained.

A couple of weeks ago he said to me, “What do you think about pulling up the carpet on the basement stairs and just painting the wood?” I BIT my tongue, really BIT it. After 33 years of marriage, I have learned how to do that without hurting myself. SO, I just said, “GREAT idea!”

I had that carpet pulled up that very night, and had a painter come the very next day to transform those stairs! Just a little improvement to some, but a long time coming for me!

So, after hubby pulled out the hundreds of staples and the padding, and the painter patched, primed and added two coats of khaki garage floor paint I already had, I’m not seeing PINK anymore!