This post has been a LONG time coming. Technically this project was finished in April, but I just haven’t made the time to sit down and do a proper post. A day home sick finally got me to do it.

Off the back of our kitchen is a stairwell that goes down to the finished basement, with a landing to the back door. When we bought the house, the stairs were completely walled off behind a door in the kitchen, and there was a second door next to the stair door that went to a small pantry-like space above the stairs. As part of opening up the kitchen, we knew we wanted to open up the stairwell and we had no problem giving up the weird Harry Potter space above the stairs to have a tall, open stairwell.

The original stairs were covered in carpet (eww!), and our contractor suggested wood treads with white risers. The first set of stairs was made of wood, but the second was made of concrete. He thought we could save the first set of wood stairs, but ultimately decided it was better to rebuild them with oak treads. The concrete steps were the challenge but he came up with a solution to bolt a thin piece of wood to the concrete and then glue oak retreads on top. He then stained all the treads in a walnut finish and painted the risers white.

I envisioned a black iron railing to compliment the black tile and hardware in the kitchen, inspired by this and this. At one point I debated vertical or horizontal banisters, but vertical won out because horizontal felt too modern for our 1930 era house. We found a local iron working shop to fabricate the railing, who’s quality was measured in the fact that we had to wait 60 days for them to start the job because of such high demand. So we had to live without a stair railing for a few months – slightly treacherous in the open kitchen! We joked (maybe a little seriously) that anyone who came to visit would need to sign a liability waiver to not sue us in case of injury, ha. Fortunately we made it accident free until the railing arrived, and we are so happy with the outcome that it was worth the wait!

It’s a little weird looking up to the kitchen when you enter the backdoor, particularly since you can see the bottom of all the cabinets, but having the stairwell open brings so much more light into the house and makes the most of an odd space. It also makes it feel a little like a split level and not a stairway to the basement, which is nice since the basement is half of our living space. A unique feature is the shoe cubby our contractor (and friend) built for us as a wedding gift. We try to be a no-shoe house, and this offers a great spot to ditch the kicks when entering from the back. He tried to convince us to put a fish tank there are one point – I’m glad the shoe cubby won out, ha!

Check out all the progress pictures below! Unfortunately I didn’t take photos of the stairwell before the renovation, just this one with my husband and our friend bringing in all his tools. Imagine that door goes down to the stairs, and to the right is another door with a few steps to the Harry Potter pantry space above the stairs. Hard to ever believe it looked like this! We still want to replace the back door and the tall wall is perfect for a statement art piece, but for now I’m just loving what this beautiful chandelier does for the space!