One of our current projects is refinishing the stairwell that leads to the library/office area of the house. The original finish on them was shellac and the stairs are made out of pine. Years of oxidation created a cherry sort of color on them. I was hoping to just do a little scuff sanding and refinishing, but that didn’t pan out. The problem was that someone put down rubber on the stair treads for traction purposes. After removing the rubber, we found that the stairs were much lighter in that area, so the treads had to be sanded down to bare wood. Brian and Jake handled these duties (phew!). They finished up a couple of weekends ago. I stained the treads cherry (ironically enough) and put a bunch of coats of Waterlox on them. They look pretty good now, but you probably wouldn’t know they were refinished unless you saw them before. Once the Waterlox is finished curing, I’m going to paint the risers and the stair trim gloss white–that’s up for the weekend. It’s going to be a pain to do this (it will be a lot of precision paintbrush work), but I think the results will be worth it.