Stairwell ladder bar? What is that? Well, it’s an essential for raising a ladder in our tall and narrow stairwell. The ladder takes me into the little hatch at the top and allows me to get into the attic. There’s almost nothing up there but I need to go there once in a while to spray the wasps nests and I also need the ladder to change the display on the shelves above the fuse box door.
Can you imagine me getting a huge long outdoor ladder in there from the garage (the door to the left at the bottom) without scratching every single surface? After the new coat of paint I asked Martin to hold the door for me and help me steer and I taped towels on the ends to protect the stairs.
Anyway the steel bar has been bugging me for ever. I’ve painted it countless times and every time I raised the ladder the paint chipped off and then I’d be staring at the black marks every single day when going downstairs. Another thing that bugged me was that I didn’t fill the gaps in the corners at the back when I last painted. Those black shadows needed to be fixed too while I was at it.
After a fair bit of brainstorming I came up with this solution to the first problem. A 30 meter / 33 yard roll of polyester cord.
What I did was simply to cover the bar with the cord by winding it around to hide the ugliness of those black marks. It took a while and the way the ladder was leaning against the bar wasn’t super convenient…
… but in the end I was done and that itty bitty piece of cord was all there was left. I used the Super Attak glue at the end and also at regular intervals along the way to make the cord stay put.
I love how it looks. Clean, fresh and polyester! I considered a white paper string which I also bought a roll of but realized it would get dirty fast. The polyester I can at least wipe off if needed.
