The Completed Front Stairs (pics)

What a difference a few nice days make. I finished the stairs and one of the wrought-iron railings. The other railing is still in the garage half prepped. I'm trying to get all the old paint and rust off before painting but it is quite the job. The weather is turning and I will have to do it in the basement. But that's OK as I bought a respirator so I can paint safely down there.

So here is the pictures of my hard work. Everything about these stairs had to be custom as nothing was "standard". The stairs had to stay at the old dimensions because the railings were made to fit those dimensions. The treads are of yellow pine sealed with a sealer and painted 3 times on all sides. The risers and and stringers are of pressure-treated yellow pine and finished in garnet dewaxed shellac. Supposedly shellac is not good for outdoors but I have found the dewaxed shellac to hold up well in our wintery climate. The open, covered porch sides on the inside are the original 90-year-old beadboard that was finished with shellac under decades of paint. The boards were still in good condition so I stripped the paint off and used dewaxed garnet shellac and after 4 years of snow build up and humid summers they still look like new. If it does fail, all you have to do is recoat it, it desolves the former coat and bonds to it. I mitered the moldings under the treads with painted poly molding and caulked with clear paintable caulking around all the cracks and where the railings were mounted. One railing to go but the stairs are done.