The Stair Remodel

So we are finished with the stair remodel.  Hold on just a minute whilst I remember how awesome it feels to say that...

And when I say finished, I mean that there are only a few minor caulking touch-ups to work on...but for the most part...it is done.  Finished.  And I am sooo very happy.  Redoing the stairs has been a ton of work- granted we did decide to redo the upstairs flooring at the same time (we thought that was a fun idea or something) and I never thought we would recover, but we made it through the holidays and learned a lot about attaching baseboard and why in fact we do need Geometry.  And now because I am constantly thinking of new ways to torture myself, I would love to paint the hand rails and posts black or possible dark grey.  You cannot quite tell from the photos, but there is a lot of railing going on in my house.  So yea, that's quite daunting.  Annnnd I've been going/needing to repaint the doors and baseboards for a few years.  That's still not at the top of my list, because I'd pretty much rather drink an entire bottle of ketchup.  But we do have progress because the stairs are complete people.  Yes!

Anyway.  In summary, we removed the carpet, tack strip and a million staples.  We then decided to remove the ugly MDF treads and buy pre-made pine treads.  We carefully cut those to fit, which is tricky when walls aren't straight.  I stained and polyurethaned each step before attaching (except for a few that I had to redo...ugh).  We then attached the treads and began work on the risers and trim.  We cut new riser fronts out of Masonite, painted them white and then attached them to the existing risers in order to hide the side gaps.  In the meantime, we had laminate installed upstairs and on the landing (with a matching bull-nose trim).  Then finally it was time for finishing touches like caulk, touch-up paint, trim-work, etc.  As for trim, I wanted some fabulous and beautiful trim going up the side of the stairs, but as you can see from the Before photos, my stairs did not come pre-trimmed.  Bummer.  Adding trim after the fact would have been beyond our capabilities, so we just added baseboard and painted the wall white in between the trim and stairs to match the risers.  And I think it turned out wonderful.

All in all, it only took us about 10-11 months.  No biggie.  :)  You can read more about the details here and here.

The lighting is really horrendous for the other sections of the stairs, so I didn't photograph them individually.  Sorry.  One aerial shot will have to suffice.  And there you have it.  So lovely.  And no more disgusting, matted, stained carpet to deal with.