Another Small Home Improvement - Up The Stairs Part I

Okay, who am I kidding?  This may qualify as a big home improvement as opposed to a small one, but by taking it in small chunks I kept it from becoming too overwhelming.  To begin with we needed to remove the old, worn and dirty carpet, all of the padding, tack strip and leftover staples.  I began by taping off the hallway from the living room with a plastic drop cloth to protect the hard work that had been done in there and corral the dust.  It was a really good plan!  It really did help a lot to contain the mess.

I started by removing the railings and then got to work on that carpet.  Once the carpet was removed I found the treads underneath were made out of 2" X 12" and they were covered in drywall mud and I mean covered!  No bloody wonder we couldn't keep the carpet clean!  When I removed one of the treads to see what I was dealing with I found even more horror lurking down below.  Tons of construction debris, even chunks of wood as well as loads of sawdust that had never been cleaned up.  On the bright side, at least no rodents!  I spent a gob of time cleaning up that mess.

Check out the crud on those stairs!

The kitty is inspecting our work, as usual

Then I removed all of the treads.  Some were cracked and split down the middle, some were barely attached and none of them were wide enough leaving a once inch gap in many places between them and the wall.  Not exactly the best quality in craftsmanship and after nearly 40 years it was obviously failing.  I spent Friday evening after work and most of Saturday on demolition.

Wine is good incentive when it comes to scraping & sanding 14 risers

And then I painted

After a trip to Home Depot we were ready to reconstruct the stairs.  My youngest and I planned to cut all new treads, but this time they were going to be nice wood, appropriately sized and finished so no more carpeted stairs.  They are so hard to vacuum and I wanted to eliminate that issue altogether.  We took our time and picked out the nicest pieces of wood they had to offer.

Two coats and another glass of wine later

Saturday night I caught my second wind and painted all of the risers as well as the wall closet to the stairs with two coats of wall paint.  It was close to midnight by the time I finished and boy, was I beat! But this was a project I couldn't afford to drag out as we needed to be able to safely get up and down our stairs in short order.  So a couple of long days of work would be necessary here.  I set some of the old risers on every other step and we were extra careful going up and down.  Then we headed off to bed.

Our cutting & sanding station

First treads in place and getting ready to install the next set
You can still see some of the crap under the stairs

We spent all of Sunday cutting the new treads and my darling daughter beautifully sanded each and every one of them.  What a trooper!  While she sanded I worked on and setting the treads.  I had to shim some of the stringers in order to get them all flat and level.  It was a long process, but the end result was definitely worth it.  As I finished setting each of the treads I also trimmed the risers.  The purpose was two-fold, no more gaps and it really added to the design of the stairs.

The FREE WOOD stash plus leftovers
from other projects

Starting the trim work

All of the trim I used I had gleaned from the FREE WOOD bin near where I work.  Two years of collecting pieces and storing them in my garage has paid off in ways I'd never imagined it would.  And it has saved me a boatload of money.  If you've ever priced the cost of trim then you know what I mean.  And it has allowed me to add more details and make our projects look much nicer too.  Thank you FREE WOOD bin!

I love the new treads

All trimmed out and no gaps between
the stairs and the wall!

Once I got the treads laid in place we could carefully go up and down the stairs for the time being while I addressed some other issues, such as the fact that the drywall didn't meet the stairs in several places, as well as how to handle the landing.  It is a bit of a mess.

This landing was going to need some serious love

And the hole in the wall where the drywall was just missing

Check back tomorrow to see more of our progress.