Who knew that two coats of paint and some carpet squares could provide so much gratification? Painting the back entrance and decorating it a month ago certainly cheered up that space, but I felt like it was still lacking in the overall, um, going-to-the-basement experience. A picture is worth a million words:

The concrete stairs had a laminate from what I assume was the early 70s, so Frank pulled that up and quickly disposed of it. I tacked the stairs with a coat of exterior white paint, and went on homedepot.com for carpet squares; I landed on Shaw Berber Smoke 12″x12″ carpet squares. I found them incredibly easy to use (I had to cut them down to size, and just used a regular pair of scissors), quite sticky (though not too sticky that you couldn’t pull it up if you had to replace it later on), and actually, not too bad aesthetically.