Take the carpet off those stairs!

Hey guys. Wanted to share my latest project with you. There are countless articles and how-to's on the web of folks who have taken the carpet off of their stair cases to reveal hardwood. This is what I went through to do mine.

Out staircase was covered in that ugly beige carpet, and over time had gotten soiled and stained from all the traffic up and down. I decided it was high time to do something about it.

Nasty right? The first step... remove the carpet. Now, others who have done this were blessed with almost perfect wood stairs underneath.  A little sanding and painting and they're done. Was I going to be so lucky?

No. There were huge gaps between the steps and risers and between the stair case and walls. I didn't want to surround the whole thing in molding to cover all the gaps so I needed to replace all of the wood. I replaced the steps with 2"x12' lumber and the risers with 2"x8' lumber. It worked out to about $75 at the hardware store. And I didn't have to worry with removing all the nails and staples that held down the carpet. Lucky me!

Some install and light sanding was all she needed.

Now came the fun part, staining. We used Dark Walnut to try and match our floors. My wife was nice enough to tackle this project while I was at work. She did 3 coats to get as close as we could to the floors. (thanks Boo!)

I then caulked around the sides of the risers to fill the voids there and used some small quarter round molding on the top and bottom to hide the small gaps there. I then applied 3 coats of Polyurethane. 

After all that was dried I taped off and applied 3 coats of white paint.

Turned out pretty good. All and all, took about 4 days to get to the final finish. We both love it and now I don't have to worry about looking at that ugly carpet any more.

Sad note though... Our dog, Mr. Leon, hates it. Watching him go up and down the steps looks like me trying not to fall at the ice rink. Poor old man.