DIY | Basement Staircase Makeover

Hello Friends!! We are kicking off this week with a little makeover reveal we recently did! It’s an area I’ve never actually shown here on the blog, because let me tell you, it was disgusting. But not anymore!! Come and see how we transformed our basement staircase ~

Now I get it, you might be thinking to yourself “It’s just a staircase to the basement”. But in my recent blog post “the Not-So-Perfect Home”, I talked about how every home has a wonky feature, or an area you’d like to change in it. Well this was certainly one for me. And I get it, it’s not an area that everyone would normally see, and it could be kept hidden – most of the time, but it was an area that bugged me, and come to find out – it bugged my husband too!

I’ve shared before about this back wall in our kitchen, and the dilemma it used to be, formerly referenced as “the wall of doors”. The door to the right leads to a back hallway, we’ve transformed into a mudroom. The middle door leads to the basement, and the door to the right leads to our downstairs bathroom.

First we added the plate rack wall, to help the wall feel a bit more purposeful, and last year we added this barn door from Artisan Hardware, you can read all about that HERE. The wall finally felt complete, that is until you opened the barn door to go down to the basement.

Since we don’t have a pantry, all of my larger kitchen appliances are stored downstairs, along with ALL of my seasonal decor. Needless to say we make frequent trips down to the basement, and every time we would slide open the barn door I cringed. You can see why BELOW ~

The walls were in rough shape! Part textured, part plaster, and a sheetrock patch job below, that was never actually patched. Now I know these are just walls going down to the basement, but I’ve said it before, no home improvement is silly if it makes you love your home more. If anything it is more rewarding, because not only did you improve the condition of your home, you actually now love it that much more.

The basement staircase walls had definitely seen better days. Yes all that brown on the textured walls is dirt, along with dings and holes, and scratches, and yes more dirt on the other walls as well. YIKES!

When we did our master bathroom makeover last spring we had some leftover materials. Some of which were the tongue and groove wood planks we used to cover up the ceiling with.

I knew they would be the perfect cover up for our basement staircase as well! We only needed to pick up on more pack to finish the job, and after the hubby was done installing them, even he said it was a huge improvement!

I debated for a little while whether to just leave the wood natural, because that was already such an improvement, or I could paint it.

I kept two things in mind while making this decision.

1. Our basement has an original fieldstone foundation, and we get a lot of humidity here in NH, so any wood we have in our basement gets moldy over the summer, which is a major bummer.
2. I really wanted the staircase feel light and bright, and have seen first hand how everyday dust and dirt can show up on unfinished wood. I really wanted this staircase to feel more “finished” instead of having an “unfinished basement” feel.

So paint it I did! And below you can see the progress and after ~

I turned to my trusted Kilz paint, because I wanted something that would cover up the knots in the pine, and STAY covered, without having to prime the wood first. And in true Kilz fashion it worked perfectly.

I painted all the pine planks One Horn White from the Magnolia Homes Paint Collection, provided by Kilz. I didn’t want anything to conflict with the light gray walls in the kitchen, or the gray paint color on the barn door, so it’s a very subtle off-white, which still allows my bright white trim paint to pop!

I hung new hooks, from Target, that hold extra shopping bags, and usually my broom and dust pan, but these are much more sturdier and prettier than the row of painted nails I had before.

Below you can see the progression from before to after, and notice how I painted the wooden hand rail as well.

I still want to get something to hang over our boiler shut off switch, I tried a few different frames, but it is such a narrow angle, I haven’t found just the right one yet.

So for now I will be happy that this project is 99% done, and the ugly walls that used to plague our basement staircase are no longer 🙂

Even though it’s not a main area in our home, I’m still reminded that small improvements can make a big impact!