Our stairs-the details

In the beginning we had this. The bane of my existence for a year! I hated the carpet and even though we had it professionally cleaned that carpet was still just NASTY.

So Edward ripped that nasty, old carpet off and left us with this

and this.

Do you see all that dirt? That is so disgusting.

He then proceeded to removed the carpet padding and the staples. Pretty, right???

The wood on all but 3 of the steps was plain ole wood, not wood treads like we were wanting. We lucked out with those first 3 steps because there was nice wood risers and treads under the carpet there. The spindles sit on them so I am not sure what we would have done if there had been icky wood under the carpet like the ones above.

Ed decided to remove a couple of the steps and risers at a time and replace them as he went. It was a long, long process. Each one had to be cut to fit. It’s funny how you would THINK they would all be the same size but they weren’t. To help keep the steps from squeaking when walking on them he glued down each step with liquid nails. Then he had to predrill each hole for the nails. Oak is a very hard wood and predrilling prevents splitting.

Here is the progress a little further down.

Here are the risers and treads installed. The oak definitely looks different than the 3 bottom steps that are poplar. Lucky we are painting.

Next up was to make sure all nails were counter sunk then to fill the nail holes and sand everything down.

After sanding it was time to prime. We chose to prime and paint the steps instead of staining. This was just the best option for us.

Then he taped off the steps to paint the treads.

We chose Rustoleum’s Kona Brown. We love it. I had already used it on the railing around the loft upstairs but didn’t warn Ed that it starts out purple and takes a few coats to get to brown. He was a little concerned at first but didn’t say much.

It took 4 coats of paint. And because we could not use the stairs he would paint then we would leave the house for a few hours to let it dry then come home and do it again. When it came time to apply the wipe on poly we decided to poly every other step so we could still go up and down the stairs as needed. The poly took a minimum of 3 hours to dry vs. 2 hours for the paint. It was a long couple of days. I wish we had had the opportunity to redo the stairs BEFORE we moved into this house. It would have been MUCH easier.

The white on the risers and trim took 2 coats of paint and we did NOT apply poly to the white because it will yellow it.

And here is the result of a weeks worth of labor.

The spindles, railing and newels were not yet done, just primed. I finally got to that this past week and here they are all finished.

We love them!

Sorry about the flash in the pictures. My camera is OLD and it has been so cloudy and dreary here this Spring that it’s hard to get any good pictures.

What we used:

Kiltz 2 and Rustoleum Painter’s Touch Kona Brown paint

Valspar Signature Semi Gloss paint in white

Minwax wipe on poly

Elmer’s wood filler

• oak treads and risers from Menard’s ( you can get them at Home Depot and Lowe’s as well)
• sandpaper
• liquid nails
• crow bar
• hammer
• nails
• drill

I hope this answers any questions anyone has about doing the stairs. If I missed something feel free to ask.

Hope to see ya again soon!

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