I absolutely love stripped/stained wood bannisters and painted spindles but how easy/difficult is it to do/have done?

[JandLandG]

Hi there

Just wondering how difficult/costly/time consuming etc it would be to get this in our home.

When we first arrived we repainted the bannisters and spindles with white gloss (over a dirty creamy colour) and also painted the rest of the hall stairs and landing nicely.

It looks nice, but now i absolutely love it when i see the tops of newell posts and the tops of bannisters wooden and the spindles painted...so how easy is it to do?

Is it a case of stripping the paint off and sanding then staining?

i'm guessing it's a lot of hard work, but how easy is it to get right?

we've got 3 floors with a staircase going up to the attic so there's a lot to do...could it be done?

any tips/experience/thoughts etc please let em know

thanks

I enquired about this when we redecorated, because half the house has this effect (looks great), and the other half is just painted white all over.

All the decorators I asked said that it would be a total nightmare getting all the paint off the handrails, the original wood would always probably look a bit crap, and that it would almost be cheaper to buy new handrails, get them installed and then varnish them than to pay someone to do the stripping. Obviously if you were doing the stripping yourselves that doesn't apply, but still, I was seriously put off.

Sorry to bear bad news. Maybe some braver mnetter has actually done it?

We have had it done in two houses now. It looks lovely. No one complained about doing it. Maybe you just have lazy decorators round your way?

I have been stripping the whole thing in my new place. It's fiddly but to just do the handrail would really not take long (in fact this is what I wish I had done). Our spindles and newel posts are just pine but the handrail is lovely hardwood and emerged from its layers of paint looking v. nice (and the house is nothing grand, 1930S ex council semi). Haven't sanded or treated the handrail in any way yet but that would not be a big job if it's in good nick. I'm not saying it would fun, but I can't see how it would score that highly on the decorating stress-o-meter. I agree that your decorators sound rather lame!

How are you stripping the paint off, intrepid MNers who are doing this? Started on ours but the little grooves are really fiddly and annoying so now wish we'd just repainted but think it might be a bit late to go back ... argh!

Didn't take me long at all. Our banisters were stained really dark, it looked awful! I sanded it all with a view to painting the whole lot white, but the banister sanded down to a gorgeous wood, so I stained it, painted the spindles white gloss and the wood strip at the bottom. I just used a fair chunk of masking tape. Whole job was about 2 days, and it looks damn fine, though I do say so myself!

I guess it would depend on what sort of paint is on your banister and how tricky it would be to strip.

Oh Dita. How I wish I had never started. I used chemical stripper first but it only got through the first layer. Now heatgunning, which works much better, but will have to Nitromors in the final stages.

JandLandG, don't be put off by this report though! Just doing the handrail will be easy.