Well, how y'all doing?

Me?

Been an interesting weekend. 

Remember how scared I was to start staining my stairs?

Well, my worst fears came true.

This is a fail of epic proportions. 

Don't believe me?

Look:





Oh, Lord have mercy. 

I decided it would be a brilliant idea to do one side at a time.  So we would have a place to walk up and down until it dried.  Yup... see the lovely line down the center??

This is just a hot mess.  Why??

I'll tell you what I think.

The instructions said that no matter how long I let the stain dry, it would still feel tacky.  So, after a couple hours I lightly felt it.  Yup, tacky.  I figured I was good to start polying.  I think, I didn't let the stain set NEARLY as long as I should have.  And, this is a hard thing.  Stain smells, really bad.   The whole house stunk to high heaven.  I bet y'all could smell it wherever you were.

I think that's why the color is so blotchy and well... nasty. 

I started crying... hard. 

Drew came home to me bawling, and, bless his heart he tried to make me feel better about it.

NOTHING he could do or say was going to make this better.

I decided I would try to finish the other side and see if that helped.

Disaster, Frances! {name that movie}

Alright Meg, calm down and get some sleep. 

First, put down a coat of poly on the entire thing so it won't be tacky anymore.  At least, safe to walk on. 

Yeah, that's when Max decided it was time to wake up, and help me.


I had laid a coat all the way down and was working on the lower portion when I heard: "Pitter pat, pitter pat, pitter pat... MEOW!!!".  He had gotten all the way down onto the landing through the wet poly and stopped there.  I had to walk back up (in my socks) to get him, but at that point, he ran back upstairs.   I was crying again.  Then I became more concerned with the wet poly on his feet and him licking them to clean them off.  Max doesn't like people messing with his feet.  But, Merry grabbed a warm, soapy washcloth and cleaned him up.  I went back to polying through tears of frustration.

The next morning {Saturday} I woke up early, lazily lounged on the couch sipping ice coffee, snuggling with Brandy & Max {he was VERY sorry!!} and watching Ree Drummond - The Pioneer Woman on Food Network.




   We had decided a couple days prior to take a nice drive in the mountains to view/photograph the gorgeous Fall foliage {I will share those soon}.  I made up my mind that I wasn't going to stress over the stairs today.  I was going out, with my family, and having a wonderful day.  And we did have an amazing day. 

I admit, I did flip out a little during the trip.  I mentioned it to Drew a couple times, and know what he told me??  "Nothing is permanent Meg.  Anything can be fixed."

He is so zen.

The closer we got to home, the more my stomach hurt. 

We stopped at Lowe's and I got another roll of paper.  Bigger and thicker this time. I got one of those floor painting mop head type things.  And, honestly, the tute I read on doing these floors suggested this tool from the beginning.  But, I'm cheap.  And I think I know better. 

We pulled into the driveway... and the house hadn't spontaneously combusted. Excellent.  We went in, and the stair fairies had not come and performed miracles while we were out.  Damn.

We chilled out for a few hours, and just before bed, Max went into spend the night with Merry and I laid one more layer of poly to get rid of the tack for good.  I did like 2 stairs with the new mop head and yelled to Drew "Why didn't I get this to begin with?!?!".  You know what they say about hindsight.  It took me only about 10 minutes to apply that last coat.  That thing is worth every penny of the $9.99.

Cleaned up and went to bed.








This morning, everything was ok.  The stairs were ugly, but safe {Except Drew SWEARS they are slippery} and the world had not ended.

 It looked like a crime scene: