Early on Saturday 4 April I heard a soft thud on the landing and then the particular silence of a cat deciding something about a staircase. By the time I got to the top, Pickle was at the bottom, looking pleased, and step four had a small round print in it that is going to be there for as long as we are.
That was day six of painting the stairs and landing, which we did over the Easter holidays. It is the tallest wall in the house, running from the hall floor to the landing ceiling, about 4.6 m, and the stairs are also the only way to the bathroom. So the whole job had to be planned around the fact that neither of us wanted to be stuck at the top of the house for a week.
The platform
Jas lent us his combination ladder on Saturday 28 March, with the words "don't lose the pins". It's an aluminium ladder that folds into several shapes, and with its legs set at different lengths and a pair of boards across the rungs it makes a platform that stands level over the stairs. Jas showed us how to lock the legs and then stood in our hall with his arms folded while Matt tested it.
The rule we kept to was that nobody went up unless somebody else was at the bottom with a hand on the ladder. Matt did the ceiling and the top of the wall with a roller on a pole, and said, from about two and a half metres up, "Top down, always. Everything drips." I did the cutting in around the little window on the half-landing and the lower half of the wall, which is where all the hand marks were, at about hip height, built up over 45 years of Dennis coming up to bed.
Prep, which was most of it
The old magnolia was grubby and there was a long hairline crack above the window. We washed the walls with sugar soap, filled the crack and a dozen nail holes, and sanded everything with a pole sander. Then came the routine that took the longest: hoover with the brush attachment, wipe with a tack cloth, hoover again. The hoover sent Pickle under the bath, which is how she likes to spend any day we use it.
Floor paint picks up every speck of dust and grit it can find, so we did the same on the treads after rubbing the old finish back with 120-grit paper. The treads were brown-painted wood, with the staple holes still showing from the carpet runner we took up in January along with the hall carpet. We wore dust masks for the sanding and kept the half-landing window open.
Alternate treads
The treads were the part I was nervous about. Water-based floor paint is touch-dry in a few hours but takes days to harden, and we still needed to get to the bathroom. So Matt drew the stairs on the back of an envelope and worked out an order.
On Good Friday we painted treads two, four, six and so on, and everyone used the odd ones. On Saturday, once those were dry enough to stand on, we painted the odd ones and walked on the even. Sunday brought the second coats on the even treads, Monday the second coats on the odd. Going up every other step meant a stride of about 35 cm, and I now know exactly how long my legs are. Matt hopped. Pauline, who came for tea on Sunday, asked if this was a new form of exercise.
The paw print on step four is what happens when you paint on Friday and a cat is in charge of the staircase at 6.40am on Saturday. We left it. It's now the only part of the staircase with a signature.
What it cost
£142 in total: 10 litres of matt emulsion £58, floor paint £34, a litre of satin for the woodwork £16, and £34 for tape, sheets, tack cloths, filler, roller sleeves and a pole. My one mistake was buying the cheaper tape for the riser edges. It bled in two places and I went over them with a small brush this morning, before sitting down to write. The better tape is £3 more. I'd pay it.
The hall looks taller than it did. I keep catching myself looking up the stairs and then going up them at the speed of a normal person.
