I came home last night to a very exciting scene. This is what the bottom half of our staircase looks like:  This is what the top half looks like:

Do you like how I didn’t vacuum the carpet for months so the before picture looks really really grimy?  Yeah, that was on purpose.

Seriously though, Scott started taking the carpet off of our stairs yesterday, and I was so happy.  So happy!!  I had all of these mental images of horrible boards underneath that carpet and all of the work it would require to make them into nice, painted wood stairs.  But no, not this time.  This time, it’s some heavy duty staple removal (thanks, husband), some sanding, some painting, and voila!  Yay!!!

I do think it’s fair to pass on what I learned in preparation for the truly horrible stairs I thought we might find.  I really like this lady’s creative approach to gaps in her stairs and other problems that probably would have made me cry: Southern Hospitality Blog.  And I like the careful, detailed instructions here (and the stained treads): Tempting Thyme.  We’ll probably be going more or less the route of the second instructions, although we don’t need to install new risers.  Whew.

To go with the theme of using what we have, we had a very “What’s around?” type of dinner.  It started out with this recipe from Giada for a simple steak salad.

We went a little simpler than her lettuce suggestions with a bunch of arugula and a bag salad mix–no endive this time.  Then we threw in some yellow and green peppers from the veggie garden and some Kalamata olives (because why wouldn’t you?).  It was good.  The red onion slices with a bite of steak and Gorgonzola… mmm!  And all of the veggies just mixed in there perfectly.  I love a salad that has more going on than my normal lettuce and tomato base.  Giada’s dressing is good, too, if you’re looking for a nice homemade dressing recipe–plenty of flavor, with just enough honey to balance the red wine vinegar and the lemon juice.  I still like my mom’s homemade salad dressing the best of all, but it’s good to try something new every once in a while.