What do you do to relieve stress? Often I clean the house, or putter around and do a project. I am sure many of you do the same thing.
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| Black stairs, white risers and balustrades |
The house I live in is alive with Alberto. Every nook and cranny was touched by his handiwork. He always went along with my decorating schemes and ideas, wiring chandeliers, making cabinet doors, doing repairs, anything and everything I asked him to do. I run my hand along a piece of trim on a cabinet door he made, and know how he taught himself to do this. It is alive with memories that make me smile and cry.
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| All black stairs |
Black has been accepted in decorating. It started with chalkboard paint and black kitchens, and segued into black bathrooms. Then black doors became hot. And media rooms and stairs painted black. I love it.
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| Black stairs by Kelly Wearstler |
We have (notice I still say we) a stairway in our kitchen going up to the camel back second floor. It is very builder looking and not elegant, wood, with open treads. A carpet runner was not possible. The stairs have sandpaper like safety strips. I could never peel or scrape them off. The stairs also had ingrained dirt that never came out no matter how much I scrubbed them.
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| Carpet stair runner - charcoal with black edge |
So I decided to paint the stairs black. At first I was going to do the whole thing, steps and hand rail, and balustrades. But I thought it would be too heavy. There are also some other wood elements in the kitchen, a tall cabinet with chicken wire doors that holds cookbooks and dishtowels, place mats and napkins; an armoire; there is an elaborate wood casing around an archway. The wood stairs always made sense with these other wood elements since they all had a similar mid tone stain.
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| Whimsical painted stair runner in black |
So I just painted the steps. It was my therapy, another small step, on one of the countless nights I couldn't sleep. I painted right over the sandpaper strips. I like the two tones that occur since I only painted the steps. It's not fancy, but I like it, and I know Alberto would have liked it too.
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| I painted the stairs black and left the rest of the wood alone |
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| I painted over the sand paper safety strips that I could not remove |
What have you painted black lately?