Crack is whack!

Sorry for the recent radio silence, I was celebrating my birthday and being sick! Here's the most current stair update from last weekend....
 
I returned to working on the stair project today after a short hiatus. Since my last post on this project I have done a coupe of small steps. First, I took to the risers with a scraper and sandpaper. I repeated this process twice. Since there was potential hazardous paint involved (unsure of this) I made sure to wear a face mask to avoid inhaling any paint chips. After sanding, I used wood filler to patch up the risers where there were dents and divots.

 

Today, J and I sanded down the wood filler to a nice smooth surface. Next we decided to tackle the crack, because crack is whack! In a 105 year old house everything is un-square, not lined up and is prone to cracks. This held true with the stairs. When we were replacing the treads we tried our best to fit them as tightly a possible, however there were still some cracks, especially along the left side of the staircase.

So I went to town with some brown caulk along all three sides of the base of each tread. Also, I used the brown caulking to fill in the nail holes on the top of each tread on either side. Here's the caulking I used, bought at Lowes-

While I was working my way up the staircase, J started working with the white caulking on the risers. He used DAP regular painter's caulking, which is named Alex.

It took us about 2 hours from start to finish. Here's a current shot of the stairs, and although the progress is almost unnoticable, all the cracks are nicely sealed up!

The last step left, is painting. Wooooooo! I can't wait to get this project done!