How we painted our stairs black - ASHES + IVY AT HOME

This is one of those projects that I wish I would have done the moment we moved in. Why did we wait so long for this stair makeover?! For some reason it’s very nerve wracking to paint original wood. Putting paint on a floor surface feels even more wrong! I’m here to tell you, Just do it! You won’t be sorry. It will make your old stairs feel so fresh!

When we moved into our old home, we were excited to see mostly hardwood floors. Terrible, nasty, hardwood floors…but hardwood nonetheless. A few years back we got some quotes to refinish the wood. It’s expensive ya’ll, so we decided to move forward with refinishing only the lower level. Including the stairs at the same time would have run an additional $2,000! SO, to save money we decided that we could give them a makeover with paint and (hopefully) make them look great and fit in with the rest of the floors. You can check out our refinished 100 year old floors here.

We have a lovely old staircase to begin with . The treads were a pretty nasty, dark wood. They looked like the old owners used to have carpet on them and tore it off right before selling the house. There were gashes and paint splatters all over. We considered sanding down and refinishing ourselves, but sanding makes such a mess and is so time consuming. Painting felt like the best and easiest option. Take a look at what we were working with below.

Materials

Sanding block
Electric sander
Painters tape
A quality primer
Floor paint – We used Behr floor paint in plain old black

First

We started by giving all of the stairs a good sanding. I used a corded orbital sander to take off the original finish and smooth out all of the dings and gashes. I used a sanding block for hard to reach corners and edges. Disclaimer: This stage in the process is A MESS! The entire entry and hallway were covered in dust afterwards from floor to ceiling.

After sanding I wiped the stairs nice and clean to get all fo the dust off. I then went in with painters tape. I have a love/hate relationship with painters tape. I always feel like it’s the right thing to do…but it usually just allows drips to come through and I end up frustrated. We did use it for this project and we did have to do some touch ups.

Once everything was taped, I began the painting process by priming every other step. I waited to a few hours and was able to prime all of the steps in the same day. Primer dries very quickly and I was able to carefully walk on the steps within a few hours.

Finally

Finally I went in with the black floor paint. We used Behr floor paint in black. This process took a bit longer than the priming process. I started out painting every other stair. I gave each tread 3 coats of paint and allowed a few hours of drying time between each coat. The following day I was able to walk on the dry paint and finished up with 3 coats on the remaining treads.

I absolutely love how they turned out and am so glad we were brave enough to paint! I was worried they wouldn’t fit in with our light wood floors, but they totally work together.