vituperation

“It’s pretty awesome, actually,” I said to my father last week as we chatted on the phone. “It’s finally coming together. We’ll probably be finished in the next two weeks.”

“What are you going to do about the stairs?”

Ah, the stairs. When the floor guy was talking to us about doing the floors, the quote he gave for the stairs alone was nearly one thousand dollars. As the floors were already the single most expensive thing for the Smallville house (except the tractor), we (okay, mostly Fred) decided to skip having the stairs refinished to save the money. Personally, I didn’t think they looked too bad. They needed a good cleaning, for sure, but they had some character:

Note the white stripes at the edges of the treads.
It made sense when I was painting the trim and shoe molding, but was pretty idiotic.
I was trying to continue the line of the molding down the tread.

“We weren’t going to do anything to the stairs but clean them up and leave them alone,” I said.

“Really? Why not just sand them and stain them yourself?” said the man who restored nearly every piece of antique furniture in his house.

“Because I don’t know what I’m doing. Every time I’ve tried to do an antique, I’ve screwed it up.”

“It’s easy. I’ll come out and show you how.”

Thus I found myself crouched on the stairs Saturday morning with my father, sanding the old finish off the stairs. With his belt sander, my palm sander, and lots of 50 and 60 grit sandpaper, I got the stairs pretty well cleaned off. He did the first one, to demonstrate, then I did most of the rest myself, under his supervision. Because of their age, the stairs were banged up and some spots wouldn’t come up (because of the unevenness) unless I sanded off lots of surrounding wood. I wasn’t willing to do that.

So we’ll be calling the parts where there’s a little old finish left “character,” and leave it at that.

Getting the stairs sanded down was simple, but a little tiring:

Nice and clean. All the old stuff around the edges
will be covered by quarter round.

Before he left on Saturday (early in the day, well before I’d finished sanding), he advised me on staining the stairs.

“Don’t do more than a couple of stairs at a time. Paint the stain on with a brush, then remove it with a rag. You don’t want it to sit on there for very long.”

Piece of cake, I thought.

Sunday morning bright and early, I climbed to the top of the stairs with my English Chestnut stain, the brush I’d bought for it, and several rags to wipe excess stain off. I painted the top two stairs in about three minutes, for I am Super Speedy Paint man now. Then, when I tried to wipe the stain off, hardly any lifted.

I had two black stairs, so dark you couldn’t even see the grain of the poplar.

On the third step I wised up. This time, I painted and wiped, painted and wiped, painted and wiped. Still a little dark, but better.

But Jesus Christ, we had two black steps. Two black steps I didn’t want to deal with. It all came crashing down on me then, how I hadn’t wanted to do the stairs but here I was, fucking them up. How I didn’t know what I was doing, didn’t want to put on not one, not two, but THREE coats of polyurethane (with sanding between coats) on before I would be done. How I’d have to repaint all the trim because I was slopping stain all over it. How all this time was pushing back our finish date on the house, how the bathrooms — which were thisclose to being done — weren’t being worked on. How these two black stairs were the latest in a distinguished career of fucking things up when I tried to refinish them.

“Fuck it,” I cried out. “I’m calling the floor guy!”

Robyn understood completely, and backed me 100%. I called the floor guy and left him a message. How much could it be? After all, I’d done the hard part of sanding it and getting it ready.

Then I called my dad to bitch.

“I give up,” I said when he answered.

“What?”

“The stairs. I give up. I’ve fucked them up, and I’ve already called the floor guy to come fix them.”

He was quiet for a moment because I generally don’t cuss in front him, and especially not THE word, the big one, the queen mother of dirty words. Then he laughed.

“What did you do?” he asked.

“I did exactly what you told me. I painted the stain on two steps and wiped it up and they turned black.” I did my best to sound both wounded and accusing.

“Why didn’t you put it on a rag and wipe it on? That old wood is so dry it probably soaked the stain right up.”

“I did it that way because that’s the way you told me to do it.”

“I said you might need a rag.”

“You said to paint it on, no more than two steps, and wipe it up.”

“You probably needed to put some wood sealer down first so it wouldn’t soak so much up.”

“HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT, THROUGH OSMOSIS? JUST STANDING NEXT TO YOU?”

He laughed again, because he knew I was frustrated and not really mad. Not mad at him, anyway. Mad at the situation.

“I’ll come out and show you what to do.”

“Not today,” I said. “I’m too pissed off to deal with the stairs any more. I’m going to hang some blinds and call it a day.”

Hanging the blinds, I found that the chick at Lowe’s that cut them managed to cut four of eleven to the wrong length, despite the fact that all eleven were supposed to be the exact same length.

Monday morning, my dad showed up with his belt sander and a can of wood sealer. I sanded the top two stairs down again, and watched him do the first one. He painted the step with sealer, then immediately went over it with a rag dipped in stain.

He made it look effortless.

As it turns out, it was, once I was doing the right thing. He stayed until I finished staining all the steps to match the floor, and before he left he told me I could put the first coat of polyurethane on in a few hours if I wanted to. I did.

Tuesday after work, I went over the stairs with my palm sander and some 220 grit sandpaper. Just enough to smooth out the polyurethane. Then, a going over with a tack cloth to pick up the dust, and another coat of polyurethane. I repeated the process on Wednesday.

The trim needs to be repainted, and it needs shoe molding, but I
don’t think it’s too shabby for a beginner. Note: the polyurethane is wet
in this picture; the dried product is satin, not glossy.
I still need to do something about the white at the edges that didn’t sand off.

Lessons learned:

• Most things are easy if you have someone knowledgeable around to teach you.
• Sanding is messy business. We ended up having to buy a new vacuum cleaner just to clean up all the dust.
• Speaking of dust, you need to use a tack cloth on anything you sand, before you put anything on it.
• Sanding a newel post is a bitch (I haven’t stained the newel or banister yet; that’s this weekend)
• 50 grit sandpaper will really chew a finish right off.
• My dad knows a lot of stuff.

I feel like the guys at the corner store are getting to know me. When I walked in Monday afternoon to get a drink, the shopkeeper greeted me, then said, “Tore anything up today?”