Saturday, September 4, 2010

Wishful Thinking

I know I told you that I might be redoing a piece of furniture. Unfortunately, on my only day off, the weather is not cooperating. Ideally, it should be over 65 degrees outside to spray paint. It only hit 62.

I know, I know, 3 degrees shouldn't make a big deal, but when it comes to a big piece of furniture, I know that trying to fix any mistakes will be uber time consuming.

So I'm putting it off for another day. I have a string of days in the 70s coming up, so hopefully I can sneak a quick painting in.


Anyways, not one to let a perfectly good day off go to waste, I've been working on something else.


These were my stairs leading to the basement (we have a partially finished basement):


You don't need to say it.

It's ugly.

Ugly carpet.

Ugly (dark) paint.

My husband tried making the finished room of the basement his "man cave."

I told him that if he was going to have a man cave, he needed to do all the work to make one.

He gave up. He's the one that decided to paint the room that awful dark blue with powder blue trim. I hope you didn't think that was my taste!

I started ripping up the carpet, and to my horror, every single $%&*%#@ inch of that carpet was glued down.




I..hate..carpet..glue.

In case you don't fully understand:
I HATE CARPET GLUE.

Nothing gets it off easily.
Nothing gets it off semi-easily.


Now, instead of a gross musty carpet on the stairs, I have a sticky residue on them.
(Which means that I have sticky crap on my feet, shoes, pants, etc.)

I have been working tirelessly for 2 days, but I've only managed to get 1 1/2 stairs done. There are 11 stairs total....


Things I've Tried

1. Goo Gone
2. Goof Off
3. Industrial strength adhesive remover.
4. Paint stripper
5. Sand paper
6. Every SoniCrafter attachment known to man
7. Mineral Spirits

The only thing that seems to work is the sand paper, but it takes an entire sheet for just 1 square foot. I would end up spending $100 just on sand paper....



It may take me an entire month to finish these stairs. I probably won't get many more projects done, but I will definitely be giving you updates/sneak peeks!

I'm envisioning white stairs, a white railing...


...and a softer wall color like this...



...or maybe this.



Does anyone have any suggestions on getting carpet glue off?
I've heard something about boiling water, but I'm not about to dump a pot of boiling water on wood stairs in a basement. That's just asking for trouble...

Any help would be appreciated!


7 comments:

  1. My husband works for a flooring finish company, they probably have something that will work, he'll be back in town tomorrow and I'll ask him what will help you. They have all kinds of remover stuff. Also, I like the 2nd blue color in your options. :)

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  2. Good luck! I love the gray walls :) Have you tried a handheld steamer, like the shark?

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  3. Oooooh that glue sounds absolutely horrid!!! Those type of things just make me dread starting projects. BUT --- ooh, BUT - the end result!! Will be absolutely awesome I'm sure.

    I've seen that type of "faux" after picture before...did you use a certain software or website to create the white stairs and change the wall color? I'd love to mess around with something like that!

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  4. I'm thinking that a heat gun would warm the glue up enough that you could scrape it off. I just don't think there's any "easy" way to get carpet glue up. ALOT of scraping is coming your way. Wishing you luck, Sally

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  5. A heat gun? The real hot one that you remove paint with. I don't know. It's just a guess but you could try that if the steamer doesn't work.

    Good luck.

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  6. Heidi- That would be wonderful if I could get his expert advice!

    Benta- I actually thought of new stair treads, but the previous ownder built the wall ON TOP OF the stairs, lol. So the stair treads go all the way through the wall into my laundry room. Is that odd?

    Leah- I tried my steamer iron and my garment steamer. No luck on either.

    Sherah- I made the "after" pics with Photoshop, but the way I did it can be done in Microsoft Paint! It's very time consuming, but I just painted over the original drawing. Having a background in artistic painting helps (like different shades of whites on the staits depending on where natural light would fall).

    Sally and Barb- I think I'm going to try a heat gun next. My mom can snag one from work. I would hate to buy one and not have it work, lol!

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