Stepping on the Book of Knowledge

When I bought my house in 2007 I had a list of things that needed to be fixed RIGHT AWAY. The carpet had to be pulled up, the stairs to the kids' rooms had to be replaced, there had to be more storage in the kitchen, walls and cabinets needed to be painted, the bathroom needed remodeling, and many small tasks. As an excited new homeowner, I got right to work! Then quickly realized that some projects were a bit more involved and/or costly than I realized. The stairs, unfortunately, fell into this category. They must have been originally built by a DIYer with no measuring device or carpentry skills. They are just plywood, even though the rest of the house has hardwood, and are too shallow (but in varying amounts) and too tall. Because they are so bad, they have always been on my list of things to not even try to camouflage, I just needed to get them replaced.

Well, I decided on Friday I had HAD ENOUGH! I don't have the money to replace them and was sick of looking at them. So, I called my friend, internet, and asked if she had any ideas. She was full of them! I found a beautiful technique for a kraft paper floor at An Oregon Cottage blog and that got me thinking... I have been holding on to several volumes of a 1945 edition of The Book of Knowledge Children's Encyclopedia for no reason other than a rampant case of bibliophilism.

I thought the kraft paper idea was gorgeous, but using the same technique with pages from the encyclopedia would be fun and interesting, and make me happy, which is important. :-) I have to admit that tearing that first page was a little hard, but once I got started, it was fun!

Tear and glue, tear and glue, tear and glue... Here is me hard at work, but Paige actually did about a third of them all on her own, plus helped tear and gather supplies when I was all gluey. Levi watched Lucille which was also a crucial part of the process.

I did every other at first so the kids could get to their rooms for part of the day

Deciding on how to trim them since some have a lip, some have a gap, some are flush... I think I am doing this ribbon on bottom and a piece of quarter round trim at the back. 

Here is the almost finished product, I need another coat of paint on the risers and several more coats of polyurethane and the trim, but I think they are great!

Here are the finished for now stairs, they are 1000X better than they started! I decided to go with quarter round trim at the back of each stair and just live with the gaps at the top of some of the risers. I'm thinking about painting the trim on the sides black and maybe doing a fancy treatment on the risers - we shall see...