One step at a time...

So the title of this blog is the answer to a question. The question is: How do you paint stairs? I've never actually done this before and it requires thought, especially if it is a stairwell that provides the sole access to an important part of the house, in this case, the basement. To go back to the beginning, in my previous blog I wrote about painting the stairwell walls. Well that was done and it came out nicely. I expected to paint the stairs all along, so I allowed my self to drip everywhere on the old stairs. Now it was time to think about painting the stairs. First, color. My initial thought was a standard grey, which would match the kitchen. Cindy was more interested in keeping a brown shade of some kind, better matching the theme in the rest of the house. So, we went out and purchased a sample, then another, then another, then...well you get the idea. We couldn't find a shade of brown or tan that we liked, and thought it would hide dirt being dragged in from the side door. Cindy then agreed and we tried a shade of grey and we liked it. Nice being right for a change!

Exciting photo of the underside of our basement stairs. 

Now, the logistics of painting stairs. Keep in mind the walls were done last month, so this is just the steps themselves. At least two things must be considered: How to paint them and in what order. For starters, when the painting is complete, we must keep off the stairs for at least a day and have no access to anything in the basement (including litter boxes). Then there's the how. I decided to paint all the "trim" areas, like the undersides of the steps, the risers and stringers, along with the railings first. For the undersides and other trim work near the bottom, I used my crawler which is normally used for under car repairs. There's also the issue of painting the underside of the stairs at all. I don't know if the stairs were original to the house, but clearly they had never been painted and looked to be in pretty good shape. No one is likely to see them, so I was inclined not to paint the bottom of the steps, but one raised eyebrow from Cindy changed my thinking. Anyway, all the sides, bottoms, and rails have now been painted twice and I await a time when I can close off the stairwell and paint the surface of the stairs. They will need two coats so at least a couple days to paint and properly dry.

Very professional looking installation,
don't you think? 

The issue of security continues to come up and I am dragging my feet on a decision of what to do. The immediate area around our home is good, with good neighbors, but frankly, there are some pretty shady areas and people in Binghamton these days and I work a lot of nights, leaving Cindy and the cats alone. In fact, we have some squatters living in a home down the street that have had the police called on them at least 50 times this year already. In any event, I think I have settled in on a security solution, but haven't decided on which (self installed) package of equipment suits us best. More on that in a later blog. In the meantime, I went ahead and changed out one of our (broken) interior cameras for an exterior grade camera. Nest gave me a nice discount on the camera since the other had broken. I decided to mount the camera on the garage, facing the driveway and the backyard, mainly because we already had a car broken into, and our garage is not secure (I know, I know). The camera itself is interesting. You screw a metal plate onto the mounting surface, then stick a cup shaped magnet to the plate. The metal, rounded back of the camera holds it to the mount and is infinitely adjustable as it slides around in the magnetic cup.

The view from our new security camera. Anyone steals
our garbage, I got'em. 

The camera is set to find your WiFi network so before mounting you use the camera, and your smart phone or tablet, to find out if the signal at your chosen spot is strong enough to be useful. That's a bit tricky while standing on a ladder. The camera does have to be plugged into AC power, which we have in the garage. Unfortunately, like so many other things in our home, the electric is not properly installed so I have yet another job to do re-wiring the lights and installing proper outlets on the second floor. In the meantime, I have an extension cord running to the camera's plug. So far, the camera has been working great. I look forward to keeping an eye on things when I am away from home.