We love stairs! Something about the beauty of a nicely stained and painted staircase… or the satisfaction of ripping the carpet off the stairs! Our guest today has a lovely hardwood stair remodel to share with us:
We LOVED our remodeled painted and stained wood staircase in our last house (See the reveal here and check out all the steps here.)
…but if you live a little more on the wild side, check out some of these creative ways you could add color and character to your remodeled wood stairs!
La Belette Rose on Remodelaholic // pin this
Dos Family // pin this
Take The Side Street on Remodelaholic
Bees Knees Bungalow on Remodelaholic // pin this
Design Sponge on Remodelaholic // pin this
Simple Dwellings
via Houzz // pin this
Funky Junk Interiors on Remodelaholic // pin this
plus check out our favorite featured staircases and then 25 Great Staircases and Entries. And now that you’ve got stair envy… Here’s Stacy to share her carpet-to-wood stair remodel (you might remember her $20 board and batten kitchen island – Stacy knows how to stretch a dollar!)
$60 Carpet to Hardwood Stair Remodel
by Stacy of The Serene Swede
Hi everyone! I am so happy to guest blogging again on one of my favorite blogosphere stops. My name is Stacy and I spill my guts about all things DIY over at The Serene Swede. Between working on my crazy home projects and hanging with the fam, I also run my own little shop on Etsy. Working with my hands keeps me sane…I think. Last time I was a guest on Remodelaholic I was able to share with you how I transformed my ugly Kitchen Island into something beautiful on a REALLY tight budget. Like, $18.25 tight. It was so inspiring hearing all of the wonderful comments left by you fantastic readers! I hope that you enjoy this post just as much!
I had been set on changing the look of my stairs for a while but to be honest, until I had seen what Justin and Cassity had done to their stairs, I figured that re-carpeting them was the ONLY option. The beautiful work they had done on theirs really lit a fire under my…well you know. I had a few issues that I wasn’t sure how to contend with, however. The first one being, I truly didn’t know what I was up against. Stair remodeling kind of freaks me out. It looks incredibly complicated! The second is that I didn’t have that beautiful white wood skirting on the sides of my staircase. I had carpet.
Yup! Carpet.
Who designs a house like that? I should also point out that my home wasn’t built in the 70′s. It was built in 2003. There’s just no excuse for it…
Aren’t those little stair models precious? I think so!
The day that I ripped the carpeting out really wasn’t too planned out. My husband was out of town for the night and I really can’t explain what happened to me but I’m pretty sure my kids thought I had gone crazy. We were planning on doing this someday so I guess it wasn’t that crazy. I just started pulling up the corner to see what was underneath and decided then and there the carpet was coming off no matter what I found anyway, so I might as well just keep pulling.
My daughter must have wanted proof that I had lost my marbles so she snapped this gem.
Step 1: Preparation
Here’s a nice little list of the materials we ended up using for our project:
1″x12″ pine boards for treads (make sure they are not warped)
1/4″ plywood for skirting ripped to the size you need, we chose 15 width
1/4″ plywood for risers, ripped to the height of each space
Liquid nails
caulk
wood conditioner (always use this before staining wood!)
stain
cloth to wipe away stain
cheap paint brush
wood filler
screws
drill
miter saw
sand paper
palm sander
safety goggles!!
screw driver and needle nose pliers (to get those staples out)
Our grand total to complete this project ended up being around $60!
Not to shabby for a complete makeover, eh?
We had planned on getting to this project eventually so we had already purchased our 1x12x12 pine boards for the stair treads and had them in the house to acclimate to the surroundings. Wood expands and contracts so we really didn’t want any surprises with how they fit once they got used to our house. Why pine? Well, because I just love the look of old, dark wood and knew that every dent would show and give it character. If that’s not your thing, you should probably go with a harder wood like oak.
Step 2: Removing the Carpet
I don’t really have a magic answer for you on how to remove it. I just pulled and it came up. Hopefully, you would be that lucky too! Wear some goggles though! Staples will go soaring, yo! My carpet itself didn’t have any staples but the padding underneath sure did!
Once the carpet was removed, I spent a little bit of time removing the staples and tack strips from the existing treads. I knew it might be a while until we could replace the treads and I certainly didn’t want any little toes getting cut open. Once you think you have them all, check again. I guarantee you missed one. If you don’t find it, it WILL find you!
Sweep up all that nasty stuff that just came out of your carpet and be thankful that you no longer have to vacuum those steps!
Step 3: Building a Stair Skirt
I had mentioned earlier that I didn’t have a stair skirt on the edges but instead had carpet. We used 1/4″ plywood to create a skirting that could then be painted white. We had ours ripped down at the store to 15″ W and only had to worry about using the miter saw to create the angle in the board for the top and bottom portion. Once we had that cut, we jammed that sucker into the gap along the stair treads and pushed it up against the trim. I wish I could say that it was an easy job but it totally wasn’t. We used liquid nails to put it up and had to try and NOT get glue everywhere as we slid it into place. A wet rag was SUPER helpful.
Step 4: Remove Old Treads
Using a pry-bar, pull up those crazy pressed board treads and get ready to add on your new beauties! I had to have a little help in this department from the hubs. Apparently, I need to work out more!
Step 5: Dry Fit the New Treads
Once you have all of your new tread pieces cut, you’ll want to dry fit them before attaching just to make sure that they all fit. If they do, then you are golden and ready to permanently attach them. All of our measurements were different for each stair so make sure to mark which one goes where with a number or you can easily get messed up.
Step 6: Attaching the New Treads
Once we were sure our measurements were correct, we drilled a few pilots holes in the treads to make sure that the wood wouldn’t split from the force of the screw being drilled in. You would really hate to see all that hard work go down the drain if your wood starts splitting. Better safe, than sorry!! Remove the tread and apply some adhesive to the supports of the stairs and place your tread back on and start adding your screws. We counter sunk ours to make sure that we had enough room over the top to add wood putty and cover up the unsightly screw heads.
Step 7: Wood Putty the Holes and Sand Away!
We filled each and every measly screw hole with wood putty and let it dry. After one application, we noticed that it started to sink down so our holes required 2 fillings of putty. Once everything had dried, I took the orbital sander and sanded each tread (in the direction of the grain) first with a courser grit and then with a really fine one to get the smoothest finish possible.
Step 8: Conditioning and Staining
Anytime you plan on staining softer woods, you should first apply wood conditioner to it to provide an even finish. It only takes a few minutes and you will be ready to stain! We chose Minwax Dark Walnut as our stain color because I just LOVE the dark against the white contrast. Because our home is a split level with our main living space at the top of these stairs, this step required a little finagling. I ended up staining every other step to give us SOMETHING to walk on but after two coats per stair, I decided to try out another method. You’ll see that in step 9 You can also get as messy as you want with the staining process because you’ll be taping off and painting in another step.
It also helps to place an object on the stairs that don’t have fresh stain on them in order to remember which ones are wet!!
Step 9: Polyurethane
This is one of those moments in the project where I decided to change things up. The “every other” method was taking too long and I was just too impatient. This time, I started from the top of the stairs and worked my way down to the bottom doing each and every one. Remember I said it was a split level? Well, it really worked to my advantage. Once I finished applying the poly, I set up a fan at the the bottom of the stairs, and went out my walk-out patio door in my lower level and up to my deck patio door! I did have to yell down to the kids to lock the patio door in the lower level once I was back inside though By morning, the poly was completely dry and ready to have another coat thrown on! It’s important to sand with a super fine sanding block in between coats of poly to give it the glassy shine too, so definitely don’t skimp on that! It really only takes about 30 seconds per stair. I ended up doing 4 coats of polyurethane for durability.
Step 10: Caulking and Paint
This step in our stair makeover was really the easiest. We taped off the stair treads and filled in any areas that needed some “plastic surgery” with caulk and started painting away! Be careful not to get paint on your awesome new stair treads! (See? I told you could be messy with your stain job!)
Step 11: Add the Risers
This is THE best part because you finally get to see the finished product and your dream stairs take shape. We painted each riser prior to putting them on because it would save us so much time. I’m glad we did! We used liquid nails to attach each piece and then used a nail gun to add some brads. Fill in all of your little nail holes with caulk or wood putty and touch them up with your paint!
Step 12: Enjoy your Hard Work
Enjoy what you did! And if your anything like me, forget that you have another stair case to finish for a while because you’re exhausted!
A special thanks to Cassity and Justin for having me as a guest again today! And if you were still on the fence about changing out your carpeted stairs, I hope I’ve help you see that it really isn’t as hard as it looks!
Visit The Serene Swede to see all of Stacy’s DIYing, including the epic story of her 6-year (and counting) basement remodel — I think we all have stories like that!
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