Painted stairs in walnut and white

It's a 1930's house with Victorian styling.  From the start I knew the decor had to change.  For the hallway it was either going to be something like painted stairs or carpet runner up the middle of the stairs.  You know, something stylish and eye catching that will bring a smile to the face when entering the house.

This is what the hallway and stairs looked like at the start.

Nice enough yes but everything was changed in the place and it wasn't long before the hallway looked like this.

So after months of neglect the poor stairs finally got cleaned and sanded and stayed like that for years.  A few months ago a banister was installed which made a big difference to the look and feel of the area.  However it was still bare plaster walls and bare wood when entering the house.  No smiles here.

So finally I got round to paying some attention to the the hallway.  I deposited the dogs at daycare for the day and got to work.  After lots of humming and haaing I decided on a painted stairway with walnut varnish for the treads and white paint for the risers and skirting board.  Once I'd decided getting started was easy.  I masked off the risers with bog standard masking tape.  Yes I could have forgone the masking as I was going to paint the risers and skirt anyway but by masking of the area I had two advantages.  Firstly I didn't have to worry about paint not applying properly to the places where the varnish had spilt on and secondly I could quickly apply the varnish without having to worry about staying within the lines.

I got a big pot (in hindsight far too much so will have to find other things to varnish now!) of Ronseal Diamond Hard Floor Varnish in Walnut and got the first coat down in no time.

It felt great to see something on the stairs after so long.  However one coat was clearly not going to cut it as I wanted a much darker colour.  So I applied another couple of coats over the next few days.  Once I'd got the colour right I masked off the treads and primed the risers and skirt with Dulux Primer & Undercoat.

At last I could see what the finished product would look like.  Unfortunately it wasn't going to be the perfect, high quality finish I wanted because let's face it, it's an old house and unless I was going to fork out for a new stairway I was not going to get a perfect finish.  So instead I resigned myself to rustic and charming and applied a second coat of the undercoat and then finished with a topcoat of Leyland Trade Satinwood in Brilliant White.  I then finished it off by varnishing the banister and newel posts and painting the spindles.  Lucky for me I think it still looks pretty fantastic.  Here is the picture of the stairs all varnished and painted.

I also got round to finally getting a mist coat of paint on the walls which makes a massive difference to the look and feel of the whole space.

I had no idea how depressing the bare plaster walls were.  Now they're gone albeit with a crappy mist coat it feels so much calmer and inviting.  Next stop is to finish painting the walls and then make a start of prepping and painting all the remaining woodwork - skirting, architraves, door jambs, cupboards - it's going to be a long winter.