I hope you are all enjoying a little downtime between Christmas and New Year’s Day, relaxing, spending time with family, etc. My time with family was cut short by a day due to the Blizzard of 2010 that began here in the Boston area yesterday. The family members who were traveling, wisely decided to get on the road a day earlier to avoid the brunt of the storm. By noon today, we had 18" of snow here. It’s really very pretty.
Here is a view from my living room window, looking out onto my front porch. Now I have real snowflakes, as well as my stenciled snowflakes on my window!
Over the last two weeks, I’ve been very fortunate to have a job going on within walking distance from my house. The homeowners are a delight to work with, and each project I’ve worked on has been nothing but fun! What a great way to end 2010. Over the next few days, I will share each of the 4 projects I worked on in this house.
Today I will start with my final project completed here… the stairs. When I first saw this incredible staircase designed by Melanie Royal and executed by her team for Peacock Pavillion, I knew I had to do something like this for a client soon! The home I am working in is an older, typical Cambridge, MA house, that has been converted into two units, 3 floors and a basement. My clients have a young family and wanted a contemporary look to this older house, so they were very instrumental in picking out designs with me, for each of the projects. The majority of the walls in this home are freshly painted with a bright white. When I first introduced this stair riser idea, I was thinking it would be done in black and white. When the homeowners decided to do them in a color, I was thrilled! I did samples in a Tomato Red and three different shades of yellow. The bright yellow samples won out.
The photos really do not give you the fabulous impact that these designs make as you enter the house and are greeted with this cheery collection of patterns. I used four stencil designs from Royal Designs Moroccan collection: Curved Connection, Eastern Lattice Small, Moorish Fleur de Lis, and Endless Moorish Circle. By the way, there are actually 2 identical sets of stairs, so I did repeat the same patterns. This is the set of stairs from the first to the second floor. There is a hallway at the top and a set of stairs from the second to the third floor, so this dramatic effect carries right up through the house.
A closer look.
Here you can see each of the four stencil designs used.
More projects in this house tomorrow. I wish I had stairs in my house!
1/10/2011: Additional notation for this post.
I am very pleased and honored to announce that Melanie Royal did a very nice write up about my stair project on her blog, Designamour. You can read her post here.
Carol, you did an amazing job with this. I loved the black and white ones we did in Marrakech, but I think that the choice of bright yellow is GENIUS! Thanks for making my day 🙂
Gorgeous stairs! Love the patterns and the colour.
Carol, beautiful and stunning, that is a project that I started to work on in my house, but that got pushed in September, thanks for reminding me that I should complete it. Great choice of color.
Beautiful work! I want to do this in my house too.
OMG I just came across this on FB..I cant stop looking at these stairs!!!
The stairs ARE beautiful, Sis! Congratulations on the great result.
Hi, beautiful stairs! I love this idea…can you tell me what BM paint colors were used? I love the yellow.
Thanks!
Thank you so much for everyone’s compliments. I am still doing a little work in the house and have to say, I just love walking through the door and seeing these happy stairs!
Rebecca: I used Ben Moore’s 2021-20 Lemon in the Aura line for the yellow. I did find I needed three thin coats to get a good coverage. Part of this was due to the fact that the stairs are old and the risers were a very uneven surface to stencil.
Gorgeous! I absolutely love them… I have total stair envy!! 😉
Hi!
During the blizzards of last year I decided to tear the carpeting off the stairs. They have been plain wood for over a year while I searched for inspiration. I am happy to say that I finally found it and I can’t wait to try this on my stairs! I am curious – did you have to cut the stencil to fit the risers? I saw that they are 8×12 so I was wondering how you got them to fit on your riser. Thanks for the advice and the inspiration!! 🙂
Yes, I did have to cut the stencils down to fit. It makes it so much easier. It always kills me to cut a stencil, but sometimes a girl has to do what a girl has to do. 😉 Good luck with your project!
Just wanted to let you know that I love all of these and that I had included the grey stairs in my stencil-project roundup 🙂
http://upcycledtreasures.com/2013/04/creative-diy-stencil-projects/
~Katie 🙂