Last year I acquired a housemate extraordinaire. She is exceptional in many ways. One is that, like me, she has a great love of all things literary. Her room is upstairs from main level. For Christmas this year I decided to give her something unique and different. Something created. Something just for her. I was inspired by this:
Once I had decided to do this I had to start figuring out what her favorite books were, so over the course of several weeks I worked to find out what she’s loved over the years. Then, because I was limited by the number of stairs, I had to narrow that down to 10. Final selection was Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers; Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller; The Giving Tree by Shel SilverStein; The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck; The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien; A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving; The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver; The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis; and Harry Potter and the Sorcerers’ Stone by J.K. Rowlings.
Most of the work I did myself, but I did get some help from a good friend, Courtney. She was completely in charge of the Lewis step and the Rivers step. She did the lettering for the Tolkien step and the Miller step, as well as some of the background on the Miller step. The rest is all my fault 🙂
Things I learned:
My knees need more padding. Kneeling on stairs for hours is hard.
I hate lettering with a paint brush.
I really should have made it so that the risers have dimension, and look slightly rounded like a book spine.
Things I love:
The Hobbit and The Giving Tree steps. They really make me happy.
So does the Lewis step, and the Rowling step, and the Kingsolver step, and…
Even though this is Annie’s present I get to benefit from it. I get the view of the stairs from my reading chair.
I hope you guys like it as much as I do.
I hope Annie likes it as much as I do 🙂
wow, cool!!! i wish i had a gift like that too… ❤
Awww! I want them!
You’re talented enough, you could make them yourself. 🙂
Reblogged this on lcparkerxoxo's Blog and commented:
i can’t wait until i have my own home so that I can use this idea!
That came out really well! I could never have done that, not at all. I’d have simply spilled paint all over everything, and probably gotten mad and cussed a lot. Well done. 🙂
(who says I didn’t cuss and spill paint all over everything?)
Absolutely brilliant! If I didn’t live in a one-story bungalow…..
Love it.
I know. But Margaret, you would need several stories of stairs to fit all your favorites.
*Looks around at own plain staircase* [This is fricking awesome!]
That is really cool and you did a great job!
This is wonderful!
That’s incredible! What a cool thing to do.
Reblogged this on Collectables and commented:
Man, I wish this blogger could do up my stairs that way!
Thanks Margy! The hardest part is deciding which books to put on it. If it were mine I would spend years debating which were my top 10 books. I bet you have clever and creative people in your world who could do work just as good if not better 🙂
Wow I really liked this! I’m going to have to have to save it for future reference on my own house!
You should. I am surprised how much character it has added to our little home.
I said it elsewhere, but this is so awesomely excellent that I want to say it again. That is AWESOMELY EXCELLENT!!
Thanks 🙂
What books would you want on your stairs, if you had them. I’m highly curious.
I’ve thought about that since you posted this. In no particular order — and prone to changes as I go “oh oh! I forgot X” —
We Were The Mulvaneys, Joyce Carol Oates
The Tortilla Curtain, TC Boyle
The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
The Illearth War, Stephen R Donaldson
American Gods, Neil Gaiman
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K LeGuin
Returning to Earth, Jim Harrison
The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara
Watership Down, Richard Adams
Speaker For The Dead, Orson Scott Card
Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer
To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
That’s a pretty good staircase!
Surprisingly I had three of yours, (And one close one)
American Gods, To Kill a Mocking Bird, and The Lord of the Rings. I would have one of the Enders Game books but I don’t know which one.