Our basement stairway wasn’t much to look at.

It started out okay, with a beautiful door leading from the addition we put on when we bought the house, into a nicely drywalled and painted area with three steps leading down to a landing.

The next part consisted of the battered remains of an old exterior door frame, below a nice brick wall that was once the exterior of the house. Then came a wall that someone had long ago done a poor job of hanging drywall on, but had never bothered to tape-and-mud, so all the nails were still exposed. Opposite that was a boarded-over area covered with unpainted particle board.  There was a plastered wall that was all broken and cracked and bulging. Next came a few more steps bordered by beadboard painted sea foam green, and another landing, followed by three more steps and finally the concrete floor at the bottom.

All of the steps were covered with 50-year-old broken linoleum held down with thin metal tack strips, most of which were broken.

I’ve been putting off doing something about this area for 10 years, so I finally tackle it. 

My plan is to do a little carpentry to fill some gaps in the trim; finish off the drywall, repair the broken plaster wall, remove the linoleum, paint everything, and resurface the stairs.

A two-weekend project.

I dig in enthusiastically.

Weeks and weeks of working weekends and evenings later, I’m at the next-to-the last step, which is to paint the stairs and landings.  After that, all I’ll have left to do will be to put down the rubber stair treads and metal tread noses.

Being a very smart fellow, I realize that if I start painting at the bottom of the stairway and work up, I’ll be bent over like an old-fashioned bobby pin leaning forward at a twenty-degree angle off vertical.  All the blood will rush to my head and my back will seize up and Marsha will have to call the ambulance to take me to the hospital, and those EMT’s will probably not take the time to finish painting the stairway before they deliver me to the ER.

But, if I start painting at the top and work down, which will be much easier physically, it means I’ll have to spend the night in the basement, waiting for the paint to dry.

Alas.

I ponder it.

“I can paint every-other step, and walk up two at a time,” I say to Marsha.  “Then, when they are dry, I can do the other ones.”

“That should work,” she says, “for a person of lesser years and girth.”

“How ‘bout if I paint only the left half of the stair steps, let them dry, and then paint the right half?”

“Better idea.”

So, that is what I start to do, until I get to the second landing, which is where my clean-up sink is located.  On the left-hand side.  So, I switch and paint the right-hand side of the landing and the bottom three steps below it, so I can clean my roller tray and other painting tools.

I carefully sneak upstairs and a few hours later, go back down to finish the other half.  It works quite well.  The problem is that when I finish and go back up the stairs, it is very, very difficult to open the door, slip out of my shoes, and ease around the door to get into the family room from the tiny little dry part of the top step, which is on the “wrong” side of the door opening.  Houdini would be proud of me.

“All done!” I declare as I emerge.

“Oh! Good” says Marsha.  “Now, can you go down in the basement and bring up three jars of canned tomatoes for our supper? I’m making a new spaghetti sauce.”                      

                                      © by Jim Whitehouse

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