A step up
We finally finished replacing all of the nasty dusty rose carpeting in the house with Pergo everywhere but the bathrooms ... which for obvious reasons will be either linoleum or tile....and the stairs. Gary had originally intended to Pergo those too, with nosemolding to cover the joints, but when he pulled the carpet up, he discovered that the step boards were rounded at the ends, which threw the nosemolding idea right out the window.
So for months the stairs sat with just the bare plywood and the crappy painting job that came with the house. There were too many possibilities. Paint or Pergo? New carpet or a runner? Stain and runner? Paint and runner? What colours? We couldn't make up our minds, plus we'd run out of steam for tackling house projects, since we'd painted the upstairs hall (Dapper Tan / white trim) and Connor's room (Boston Fern / white trim) not too long ago.
Then Gary ran into a guy from around the corner who does house projects. When budget and timing finally collided we lost his business card, then we finally reconnected and he started work. He spent a day in prepwork ... sanding, patching and replacing a bad board. Gary gave him some stain to use on the stairs. The first coat presented us with a dilemma: the stain was too dark, and worse, since the plywood had sat under the rug for nearly 15 years, it had absorbed who knows what, and the stain didn't soak in evenly, leaving it unacceptably blotchy.
Gary voted for covering it all over with white paint, with the idea that if it didn't look good, we could add a runner. Rodney talked us out of it, pointing out that a few coats of lacquer would brighten it up. I talked Gary into seeing what the lacquer would look like first, then Gary thought of using the Pergo on the vertical surfaces. The steps themselves were pine, not plywood, so they'd do well with the stain. It worked out better than any of us anticipated, so we ended up with a nifty two tone effect.
I'd worred at first that lacquer and / or Pergo and the stairs would be a dangerous combination but so far so good. Behold:
