I’m excited to finally be replacing my old carpet with hardwood. But when I got the estimate for installation, I was stunned that the stairs alone would cost $1500! So I took on the task of re-doing the stairs myself. It wasn’t complicated, but it did take two of us a couple of days. I’ll show you how you can install hardwood stairs yourself for a fraction of the cost.
First, I’ll start by saying that I had two flights of stairs to makeover. The main flight was simpler, because there were no cuts in the drywall. The upper flight of stairs had the treads inserted into the drywall, so we had to use a different method involving tread caps. I’ll cover that in another post. For these stairs, I purchased red oak treads from Lowe’s. They had two different thicknesses, and I went with the thickest since I thought it looked more substantial. There were $28 apiece.
So, here’s what the stairs looked like. (Excuse the picture, we were Home Bowling.) We’ve owned this house 7 years, so the carpet is at least that old. It’s green. And furry. It reminds me of Oscar the Grouch.
1
The first step was pulling up that nasty carpet. You’ll need a utility knife to cut the carpet underneath the nose of the landing. Tug hard, cutting with the knife when necessary, and pulling out stubborn staples with pliers. You might want to wear a mask as your carpet is likely even dirtier than you realized.
2
You’ll need to remove the carpet tack strips with a small crowbar and hammer.
3
My treads weren’t even pine, just pressboard MDF. Use a crowbar and a hammer to pry off the first tread.
4
I decided to add a veneer to the riser instead of replacing it. I bought a big sheet of beautiful thin beadboard for $45, and it was enough to cover all 13 risers. My risers were all 7.5 inches tall, except for the last one, which was 6.5. Cut a piece of beadboard to fit the top riser. We used a handheld circular saw.
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You can hand-nail the beadboard in place with a hammer and small finishing nails, or an pnuematic nail gun will make it go very quickly.
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Measure between the walls to find the length of the stair, then cut the tread to size. We used a miter saw for this. Slide the tread into place.
7
The oak is very hard, so use a small bit on an electric drill to make the hole. Then hammer the tread in place by hand.
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Set the nail heads with a nail setter. Later you can cover these using a little wood putty.
9
I decided to paint my beadboard risers black, as I’ve heard that white ones get scuffed easily and are a hassle to clean. I’m waiting to stain the treads until my flooring is installed so I can get a good match.
If your stairs are cut into the drywall, don’t worry, I’ll have a blog post on how to do those soon!
What do you think? Is it an improvement? Would you try this?
Finished?
I just love this idea. Keeping this on the back burner for when my newly just carpeted
stairs wears out. Thanks for this great and lovely idea.
Many thanks for sharing this blog. We starting to refurbish a 110 year-old farmhouse. There are three staircases in the place and all of them look like a herd of cowboys with spurs lived here at one time. The beadboard idea is perfect and will certainly go with the age of the house. Also taking your advice about doing the treads ourselves.~~xoxo
I am going to try and replace my stair treads why i ever had them carpeted I don’t know! Huge mistake something I don’t recommend any one doing! Thanks for all of the tips especially the predrilling before nailing on the tread I had my upper flight done by a so called professional and he did not do that and I tried to put wood filler over some of the nails and it will not stay because they are not sunk in enough.
Will you be putting a poly coat over the stain? I’m in the middle of this project and can’t decide… I stained mine prior to install due to all the fresh paint surrounding the staircase, but I would have liked to have been able to cut and place them first. My risers are painted a high gloss white – no shoes allowed upstairs so hopefully no scuffs to worry about! Thanks for sharing!