The Healthy Lantern: Southern Gal in a Yankee World-Renovation Part 1

Here is a peek at one of the many renovations that we have done to our beloved 1880s farmhouse, which was also the summer vacation rental of John Philip Sousa (do I hear marching bands?!?!)

Main home in spring

Carriage house (my fave part of the property!)

We fell in love with our house but not the design of the the previous owners. They had immaculate and beautiful tastes but it did not match what we felt was "farmhouse" nor our own style so we set out (and are still embarking) on making it our own.

This reno is on a back servants staircase that leads from our kitchen to the upstairs. It was hidden under an asian themed red carpet (read antithesis of farmhouse carpeting!!) When we removed the carpet we found the most amazing, worn, rustic, and sadly uncared for wood stairs. They had paint and spackling carelessly splatter all over them.

I ADORED the worn centers from the thousands of steps tread upon them, and had hoped to keep that somewhat but I had to sand so much to remove the splatters that I wasn't able to keep as much of the wear as I had hoped. Below you can see the transformation from what we uncovered to what we have now.

I went with a poly blend stain and ended up mixing a few colors to get the exact color I wanted. It had a bit more red tint than the original steps but it is nearly spot on to match all the solid, 6 panel wood doors throughout the house (of which there are 5 right at the top of the stairs...we removed one to fully open up the hallway area)