For this project, we turned this:
Into this:
The customer wanted to have a way to prevent guests from slipping off the step that was very well camouflaged. We had much discussion about tearing out the large landing, but that was more than the customer really wanted to do, so I suggested we simply stain the edges a different color.
To accomplish this, I sanded down the edge boards, then applied a darker stain, two coats, to get great, even coverage.
We chose to stain the horizontal boards under the top vertical edge boards to help further delineate the step as you’re approaching the landing at the front door as well.