Staircase Makeover

It seems I forgot I had this blog, but no time like the present to start an update. We started our stair makeover today. We had originally planned to leave the carpet and paint out the rails, however I was in love with a staircase I saw on the House and Home forums. A poster named France had the most incredible stairs and I decided to just go for it. John and I ripped up the carpet today. Can I just say now, I had no idea how much work this was going to be. However, I am so excited to get it started and can't wait to finish it.

Here's our before photo, pre-flooring

Todays work:

Tearing out carpet and carpet tack bars 4 man hours

Removing a thousand staples 5 hours

Some woodfill 1 hour


We started by tearing out the carpet. This job was easy enough, just messy. I bought a new shop vac just to start this project. I'm a clean as you go person, so it stayed relatively clean. We used a pry bar and screwdriver to take up the tack bars. Good news....The carpet was very well installed. Bad news...It was too well installed. I am not sure why they needed so many tack bars, but if there was ever a hurricane, I am sure the carpet would have been intact had the house blown away. Here is what we found. The treads are made of 2x10's and there are a few knots and various gouges in the wood itself. The wedge shaped stairs are plywood'ish. The landing midway is plywood I think, but a really textured plywood (maybe it's called pressboard). I don't think this landing will be pretty to paint, but the runner should hide most of it. The risers are all MDF. I think some sanding will help with the shaping of the treads as some of them look a little wonky.

Then it was time to remove the staples. Two different sizes of staples and at least a thousand...ouch. This was pain staking I tell you and I am glad to be through that piece.

Next I started with some wood filler. After removing the tackbars and a thousand staples, you can guess how the stairs look. I thought filling in those holes would be a smart idea to really finish the look. I only bought 1 tube of filler and did not get a third of the steps finished today, so I am going to buy 3 more tubes of natural wood fill tomorrow and finish it up.



Here is where we are