Do you know Tread and Riser??

Until this today, we didn't either. But our good friend Micah introduced us to Tread and Riser. The main project for this weekend it to refinish the stairs and put in the balusters and railings that go with them.

Mike and Micah wasted no time before they got to work on the stairs. When I got there this morning, this is what I walked into.

Makes it kind of difficult to walk up the stairs when they look like this. It was bad enough without any railings or walls to hold on to, but this one takes the cake.


Here is the mid way finished project....all brand new treads and risers. The treads are unfinished red oak hard wood, which will match the floors perfectly.

A view from the front door.

Of course what you do to one set of stairs, you need to do to the other one. Here are the boys hard at work getting the second set of stairs prepped for their new treads and risers.


The downstairs at the halfway point in their remodeling process. Looking pretty good if I do say so myself.

For those of you who are wondering if I am actually taking part of this remodeling project, besides taking pictures and outside work, these next few pictures are for you.

See I can have fun with power tools as well.

While all this fun and cool stuff is happening inside the house, I was still picking a battle with the ivy in the back yard. Many of you will remember what it looked like when we bought the house, but in case you don't, here's a reminder of what it did.


This was the first day we started on the ivy project, and when I say project, that is what I mean. This is by no means a small task. It's going to take several weekends to get all this cleaned up. But I did make some progress today, so it helps with the massive task at hand, to know that I have one small area cleaned up.

Can we say yeah for progress?? I know it doesn't look like it should have taken that long to get to this point, but let me tell you, ivy is a force to be messed with. Some of the root balls that I pulled out of the ground were massive. One down, only two more tree areas left...

Before we called it a day, the guys made some more progress on the stairs. They got on the pieces that we will eventually attach the balusters and the railings to.

So far we've had a very productive weekend. Hopefully tomorrow will give the same results!