This summer Steve and I worked on our entry and staircase to give it more character. I started lightening up the staircase by painting the risers white. We added trim to our stairway and painted it white which made it look like white paneled walls. We also stained the banisters black. Here's what it looked like BEFORE as I was starting to paint stair risers. It's a beautiful stairwell- it just needed a little oomph! To stain the banisters, I started by lightly sanding where I wanted to stain (and I mean it was quick- it's just to rough up the wood). After wiping up all the dust, I used green Frog tape to wrap around all the spindles. This part took awhile! I used some cheap throw away brushes to apply Miniwax Polyshades in Classic Black. This product is great because it already has a poly coat in it. The end result was fabulous and required fewer steps than priming, painting, and applying poly. Once the railings were stained black, I worked on the lower half of the banisters. Now for the trim! The trim is 1" x 2.5" pine. We thought this width looked good in proportion to the overall space. We bought 1" x 6" trim and then ripped (cut length-wise) the boards on a table saw. First, we first laid out where we wanted the trim to go by marking each piece on our walls with a pencil. We tried a couple of different layouts before deciding on a final layout. The shortest section was between the floor and the stair landing. We essentially split that section in half and the space between boards ended up being 22". We used that same spacing for the other two walls. The height of the trim is the same height as the banisters. Finding the angles between the trim pieces and the inclined staircase was a little tricky. It took some trigonometry to figure it out. My husband is a math geek so he did this part. Or, you could just cut a couple of scrap pieces until it looks right. You'll notice the trim is thicker than the baseboard trim so we also tapered those ends with a 45° cut. When the taper was on an incline, we used a compound miter cut. Once we had all the angles and layout, we cut them on a miter saw. We used Liquid Nails and a trim nail gun to affix them to the wall. Once all the trim is up, we caulked where the trim met the wall and we sanded any rough edges. We then painted with one coat of Zinzer water-based primer and two coats of white trim paint. I still need some art work on that one wall going up, so I'm sure I'll show you what I put up there soon. I'm also probably going to paint the dresser in the corner (still working on that one too). Here's the back side of the stairwell. Everything looks better with some flowers. These lime light hydrangeas have done well this year in our yard and it's fun to bring them in and enjoy them. The cost of this project was under $100 for the stain, paint, wood, caulking, and glue. Not bad! I really like the white paneled look and it brightened the whole entryway. What are some ways you have found to brighten your entryway?