Forum
« Insurance recommendation? Plumbing / Heating Recommendation »
December 9, 2008
Bannister: To paint or not to paint.
We are renovating our new house and are painting the hallway to get rid of the school hall beige, but we can't afford to strip the bannister just yet. Currently it's a disgusting milk chocolate brown. Should we grit our teeth and deal or is there a better color to paint it for the time being?
Comments
I think you should either suck it up and live with the brown banister (I know the color very well, all of our wood was painted the same brown)or have it stripped now. Adding more layers of paint will only increase the cost of stripping at a later date. You will have to prime and paint many layers to cover up the brown color.
We used Joe Salem to strip our banisters and we found him to be very reasonable- 718-755-6527, it might be worth getting a quote.
To save money maybe you could strip the banister on the main entertaining level and wait to strip the rest at a later date?
Posted by: PHfamily at December 9, 2008 3:42 PM
Thank you. I think we will be following your advice about leaving it till later and may contact Joe Salem. But I will always wonder why if someone was going to paint a bannister, they would paint it that color....
Posted by: nk at December 10, 2008 9:57 AM
My renovation budget accommodated a certain amount of wood stripping but I had to stop at the hallways, so I decided to paint the banister a color I (and my tenants) could live with for the time being rather than leave it brown. I guess it would cost a couple thousand at least to strip the banister as opposed to a couple hundred to paint. If I remember correctly spindles cost about $25 per if you have them uninstalled and dipped. I'm mighty glad I painted too, because the brown was just horrible and depressing (spindles off white, banister soft black, walls light gray). I doubt it would cost much/any more to strip one more layer of paint once you have the money to do it down the road.
Posted by: herkimermaid at December 10, 2008 11:03 AM
Guess I responded too soon! Thank you both, I'll have to weigh my options here. I didn't know you could use a soft black on the bannister, thought I was limited to the oil paint selections which are pretty hideous.
Posted by: nk at December 10, 2008 1:11 PM
Post a comment
Please be patient while your comment is published. It may take a moment.