It's supposed to be welcoming, dang it!

It's not easy to coordinate lots of moving pieces, projects and people when I'm halfway across the country more often than not (only a slight exaggeration) but rarely are the things worth doing easy. 

This past week, my first flight out of Madison got cancelled because it was -20 degrees with a -50 windchill. Some people chose to use the extra time for boiling-water-flinging off of balconies that I'm sure you could YouTube but I chose to stay cozily wrapped up in Isthmus House thinking about my kitchen as y'all read about last week.

This week, it hit nearly 40 degrees on the thermometer before dipping back below freezing. Naturally, that means ice everywhere. Our driveway and sidewalk managed to produce inch-thick ice with no additional snowfall so The Roommate and I spent part of Sunday chipping away at it with shovels and an ice-breaker and getting concrete-safe salt down. 

Sadly, needing to take care of those things (and looking worriedly at my roof whilst praying for no ice dams) made it challenging for me to reveal that which I hoped to reveal this week. So, dear readers, you'll be waiting one more week. 

That said, it's not like we only have one project going at Isthmus House at a given time - that would be far too mundane for my mild, project-centered ADD. No, after finishing up another step on next week's reveal, I wanted to start something else. Walking down the stairs to get a glass of water provided my source of inspiration - the stairs!

Up until now, I didn't really know what was under the carpet and metal strips that had been unceremoniously nailed to every tread.

 Although my prayers leaned toward clean hardwood, I figured it was either:

a) something tacky (meaning sticky, not gaudy - the latter is assumed with before photos at Isthmus House)

b) something that was slopped on the there (I was guessing lots of layers of stain, paint or both)

c) something slippery (because then I couldn't take off all of the carpet and metal)

d) all of the above (they could have found a way, I'm sure)

I started on the top stair and worked by way down. The top stair did, indeed, have some tacky tar-paper like coating. I wasn't planning on pulling out my scraper this weekend so I left that one intact lest we stick to it only to pitch forward into the window only four stairs away on the landing. (Does it sound like I try to prepare for the worst case scenario?)

Nevertheless, with the house to myself, it was the perfect opportunity to clean up the stairway (prybars and hammers are loud - use ear protection and you can still hear your music!). I decided to keep going and pried up the next stair's metal and carpet. With five nails to every tread, my first thought was that the patching these stairs are going to need isn't going to be a cakewalk.

This stair was not tacky, just dirty as could be. And it did have the build up of paint I figured would probably be present. I'm 95% sure that brown is actually paint, not stained wood. I don't see the paint as a bad thing at this point - I'm going to probably do a little damage to the stairs as we continue the projects upstairs and the paint can act as a buffer for me until they're refinished.

It only took me about an hour to get all of the metal and carpet up and to corral all of the nails holding them down. I love getting decent quality nails (or pretty much anything else) out of the things I'm ripping out of Isthmus House (never original things!) - they can be reused and I don't have to buy more!

Like I said, the stairs were more than a little dirty...

But they looked so much better after washing them with just warm, soapy water.

When The Roommate came home, she commented how much better they already looked without the carpet and metal and I think I have to agree. We still have a long way to go in this foyer and the stairway but there should be a beautiful entryway when we're done - that's progress!