Project: Staining the Banister

I'm off to NY tomorrow for four days - mostly work, the rest friends, family and fun.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with a small DIY project we are just about finished with: staining our banister-

Here is the before (this is from the model since our before pic disappeared, but it's the same banister and staircase). I wanted to stain it darker from the very beginning.

I did some research on how to stain a banister and first we had to sand. We had to sand the wood down with a rougher grain first to strip the "shine" from the wood and then a finer grain to make it smooth. Sanding is a great arm workout and you end up with the wood looking like this:

After sanding, you have to vacuum the banister itself as well as all the area around it. That's where the trusty Dyson comes in handy:

Next comes the stain. We used Minwax Ebony from Sherwin Williams. We used some white rags and dipped them in the stain and rubbed it over the wood. Apply the stain and then wait approx. 15 minutes and then wipe it with a clean cloth to wipe off any excess. It smelled toxic, but after two coats we were left with a banister that looked like this:

It still needs some polyurethane, but I think it looks pretty good! What do you think?

Now the question is - do I paint the french doors of the office (adjacent to the banister) black also ?

Have a great weekend! xoxo.