Grace and Josie | A Blog for Moms

Rhode Island based Mom blogger sharing fashion, shopping, and lifestyle tips.

Our Renovation Story: Stair Design

When it came to the stair design of our 2nd floor story addition we honestly didn't give it much thought. Who knew it would be one of the features that makes me smile the most every day!

Here's a look at the entry before we began construction - on moving day actually as you can see by the brown paper on the floor. To the right of our front door there you can see a tiny little knob that belongs to a door that led up to the attic.
Original Entry



My only explanation for why we didn't have an initial opinion on the stair design is that we didn't worry too much about what they'd look like because they were always neatly tucked behind a door, surrounded by lovely beadboard.

Until one day I came home from work in March to find this:
Renovating Stairs


Boom. Oh yeahhh we have stairs in our living room... And soon after we were living with the reality of a second floor (up until now all that construction was tucked neatly behind the former door), our contractor started asking us about our stair design preferences. Which balusters do you want? Colonial? Pin top? I was so confused! I had to do some googling just to understand the terminology.

Here's a refresher for you stair experts or a great tutorial for the non-stair aficionado.

Understanding Stair Terminology
Stair Terminology 101
Our Contractor kept it pretty simple and suggested a few balusters and newel posts to use, but I decided to put my iPhone to work and research stairs on Pinterest. And then I really got into it. I formed my opinion and brought Matt on board. Colonial didn't really feel right with the house, even though our house was turning into a Colonial with this renovation... Downstairs we have a lot of squared-off features with the nice clean lines of the beadboard so what I ended up discovering was actually more of a Mission look. I ended up finding this image on Pinterest and left the Contractor and Carpenter to work their magic.

Mission Style Staircase from Pinterest

Keep in mind that this image features the pre-painted/stained staircase and ours below is the finished product, but there was a time when our stairs looked almost exactly like this!


Here is our final product. I'm so happy with the newel post (the front part) and the square balusters. Love ♥

Mission Style Staircase

The carpenter did an amazing job on these stairs to take it from post-apocalyptic to Mission style coastal. What I love most is how it flows with the rest of the downstairs. It works with the beadboard, matches the wood floors and looks nice and open. Believe me, I never thought 50's era attic stairs could look so good!


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50's era attic stair update
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