I had always wanted hardwood or tile on all of my floors, but when we built the house, we needed to save a bit of money by putting in carpet. Sometimes I get in these “moods” where I have had enough and need to take some sort of action and last winter I pulled the carpet out of the hallway and stairs without much of a backup plan!
Then, once I had the carpet out (no small task in itself), I thought it was a good time up get rid of the awful paint, too! So, it turned into an even larger project (this seems to happen often!)
As you can see, this area needed a lot of love and I needed to really think through how I was going to replace the floor.
This is where it becomes interesting. My boyfriend, Bill, was having some lumber milled up for a project of his (more on this in the future) and suggested that he have the guy mill up some maple for my stairs.
I thought that sounded like a great idea, and so the process began.
So, the wood was milled on-site at his house and we stacked it and put it under some pieces of metal roofing to protect it from the rain. Maple lumber is really heavy!
After a few months I decided I didn’t want to wait until it was dry naturally – this could take a year or more. I needed some wood on that floor!
So we found a wood kiln conveniently located close by in Wolcott and they put it in their kiln for a few weeks. The maple was still heavy, but it was dry!
Then we brought it to a mill in Johnson so they could plane and sand the lumber, as well as bullnose for the stair treads.
Luckily, the saw mill delivers, so they brought it back to my house! Oh, and they had also cut the stair treads to the lengths I asked for, which made things quite a bit easier. Now I only had to lay them, right?
Things always seem to end up more difficult then you’d think – I’d run out of liquid nails, the drill bit would break, the countersink on the drill bit would get dull, the sandpaper I had didn’t fit the palm sander, the countersink hole wouldn’t be deep enough, I’d run out of screws – all sorts of things to hold up the process. It’s a learning experience, right?
I’m still in the process – almost all of the stair treads are in, most of the landing, and I’ve started some polyurethaning. We still have the entire upstairs hall to complete. Luckily Bill comes to help me with cutting – some projects are just more pleasant when you’re working with someone else, and this is one of them!
When it’s complete it will be beautiful! And it feels satisfying to use local materials that I’ve guided through the whole process!
