We like to dramatize the house and imagine what it will look like in 20 years to ease the pain of its current condition just a bit.  Here’s what we imagine it looks like:

And here’s sassy ol’ me:

And this is how romantic our house (and living in the same zip code for a few months) makes us feel:

But “Rhett” and “Scarlett” are our middle names, after all:

The reality is, we have a pretty awesome staircase.  It is straight ahead as you enter the front door, goes up to a landing, and then makes a u-turn up six more stairs to get to the second floor.

The original banister is still in tact minus 6-7 pickets – pretty good for 170ish years of kids sliding down it.  Mary Poppins would be jealous.  It is, however, a “use at your own risk” banister right now – when you put your body weight on it, the whole banister does creak out at a startling angle.

The side of the staircase also has amazing paneling and gingerbread details.  There doesn’t seem to be any damage and there might only be one layer of paint on this wall(!).

Unfortunately, as you may have noticed from some of the above pictures, the stairs have been sporting a red, berber runner for quite a number of years.  Although you might be imagining something luxurious –

– trust me – it’s not.  Despite multiple vacuumings, our runner still has quite a lot of stuff in it.  Not to mention a healthy portion of spider webs and leftover spider dinners.

Rather than one, long piece of fabric, each stair was covered with its own piece of runner, held tight to the stairs with (what was once) a brass strip.  The brass strips were screwed into the back of each stair:

I went ahead of Chad with the screw driver, clearing out cob webs and removing the brass strips.  Chad admittedly had the harder job, bringing up the rear by ripping up the carpet and the pads underneath.

Unfortunately, in addition to being held down with tacks, someone went a little Annie Oakley with the staple gun…roughly 10 tacks and 20 staples per stair, and 22 stairs plus the landing…you can do the math, but we were certainly becoming experts with the pliers and the back of the hammer.

Even though the bizarre paint layers make our “new” stairs look a little zebra-esque, “frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”  It’s so much better than it was, and what a thrilling surprise to find that, despite discoloration, the hardwood underneath is in amazing condition.