I usually fall UP the steps, which is very hard on your pretty little shins.... Now I have a carpeted stair story. There was an elegant elderly couple in my childhood neighborhood; he a judge, she a portrait painter; both of them very tall, with excellent carriage, and adorable personalities. One day, she was upstairs putting on her hat to go to a luncheon with her garden club, and she saw a crib mattress that her daughter was coming to pick up later in the day. So to get it down the stairs most efficiently, she positioned it at the top of the stairs, sat down on it, and rode it down the stairs, in her crepe afternoon dress and her white gloves and her flowered hat. At that moment, the taxi driver arrived at the front door, which was of course open except for the screen door. Just as he raised his hand to knock on the door, his perfectly proper passenger came sailing across the front hall on the baby mattress. Without a word of explanation, she stood up, settled her skirts, said "Good morning!" and went right out the door. I can only imagine the expression on his face.

I agree with Squirrelheaven to a degree. I don't think the woods have to match, but they do need to play nicely together (I can't think of how else to say it). Our wood floors are gunstock oak, but I like the contrast with the dark stair parts as well as the contrast between the floor and the dark maple cabinets. And your light cabinets seem like they would fight against the dark stair parts. BUT, I don't think you can discount the furnishings. When you walk into a furnished home you see it as a whole, not just the structure. So I do think you could get away with it since you have so many dark woods for the stairs to play off of. If you did stain your cabinets darker, the darker stair parts would tie in better, but I know that's a huge job and not something you might even want to think about (or even want to consider)! There was another thread about good decorating books, and a book by Lynette Jennings was recommended. I bought it and loved reading every page of it. One of the things she advises is to do what you love. It's YOUR house, so decorate it the way that makes YOU happy. You don't have to play by any rules. I would stand back and look at your railing with your eyes squinted and imagine it the way you want it and take in the rest of your house with it painted that way. Does that feel right to you? If so, I'd do it! Lynette had so many ways of saying the same thing. One was, "Decorating is fun when you take away the fear and the rules and develop confidence in your own decision-making ability." Another one was, "So stick to your instincts, don't be afraid of the result, and don't fall into measuring your natural selections against what appear to be the commandments of design." So go with your gut, Shee!

No problem -- there was a lot of political stuff going on here recently and we also get spammers using all sorts of tricky methods to do their thing (free advertising is not permitted and there's another forum called 'Hot Topics' on the Garden side for the controversial and emotion-packed subjects). You can post photos by using a site like ImageShack or Photobucket. It's free and you upload the pics from your pc and then just cut and paste the supplied link into the form here. Make sure the correct code is used by seeing that your image appears in the 'Preview' area.

Thanks, robinj. Your stairs are a knockout. It may have been your original post that flashed in my mind when I had the idea to do this...I know I've seen it before. Now I'm probably just as confused as when I started, but I will take my time with this one. It REALLY helps to see one with similar colors to mine. My stairs are nowhere near as grand or interesting architecturally as yours, and that is probably why I'm looking for something to make them more so. Or, it's entirely possible that I'm trying to put a silk purse on a sow's ear; LOL, in which case I should just leave it alone and accept the fact that the stair railing is not my favorite feature of my house and leave it at that. I have until mid week to let the painter know; or I just pass on this one until some other work gets done. (New light fixture, for instance!!)