Remember last year when I updated our oak stair railing? Instead of choosing the more costly option of putting in a completely new railing, I decided to use an oil based paint and gel stain to refinish the oak banister. You can get all the details here, but the results were absolutely stunning.
It’s been about a year and a half since I finished our stair project, and today I am sharing an update of how things are holding up since the refinishing was fairly superficial. I love finding affordable and simple solutions for updating my home, but with rowdy kids I was curious how things would hold up over an extended period of time.
Often times our kids are climbing up the railing, launching down toys, or just generally playing on the stairs. They are definitely a high traffic area and I have been impressed with how the new finish has been wearing.
While it has held up fairly well, there have been several areas that have started to show some wear and tear. These areas are mostly on the gel stained portion. You can see various nicks where the gel stain came off leaving the oak exposed. Luckily these spots are quite small and not overly noticeable.
One odd thing that happened was the cracking effect on the ball top of the newel post. I’m not exactly sure how I could have prevented this, but once again it is very small and hardly noticeable unless you look quite close.
As I mentioned, these few nicks aren’t very noticeable and they honestly haven’t bothered me as of yet. However, I plan to lightly sand the small area around the nicks and apply more stain sealing with the top coat to finish it off. As always, I’ll keep you updated on how it turns out.
I have just learned what causes the cracking in the finish and had to share. In my case I did my dining chairs with spray paint but apparently the directions on the can are there for a reason. Who knew?! After the cracking appeared on my chairs (on the final coat of course) I was completely befuzzled! my husband picked
up the can and read aloud “recoat within 2 hours or after 48 hours”. He said that the chemical reaction that occurs during the drying time needs to complete otherwise it will cause the “orange peel effect” as if you didn’t prep the surface.
Oh that is good to know. I *thought* I followed the instructions, but I may have rushed the coats. 🙂 It was odd that was the only area that it happened and it was very hairline so that is good to know! Thanks for the info! 🙂