Carpet to Wood stair makeover reveal - SimplySwider.com
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Carpet to Wood stair makeover reveal

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Jason Carter

Carpet to Wood stair makeover reveal

carpet to wood stair makeover

It’s finally time for the kitchen stair makeover reveal! Many of us are stuck with builder’s grade carpeted stairs, but that doesn’t mean we have to live with them! For about $150 we were able to transform our boring old stairs into beautiful custom looking wood stairs! I already shared with you how we built the stair treads ourselves, so let’s get straight to the pretty pictures!

P.s you can see all my inspiration for this project here.

wood stairwell makeover

Ohhhh…….

stairway makeover from carpet to wood

Ahhhh…….

covnert carpet to wood stairs

So shiny!

ebony stained handrail

And my favorite part! Before and after pictures!

stair makeover

The view from the pantry…..

And a picture from before we even moved in…..

stair makeover before and after

These are the stairs that go from our kitchen to our play room (room over the garage), so they are slightly shorter than average stairs. We used this project as a practice run for our foyer stairs which will hopefully be getting the same treatment before Christmas!

Foyer

If you were just here for the pretty pictures this is your queue to leave. Now on to some of the more technical aspects of this makeover…..

The stair risers are made from stain grade plywood (same thing we made the foyer wainscotingisland cover panel, and faux chimney box from). After each piece was cut to size I rolled on two coats of primer and two coats of white paint each. I spread them out on table in the dining room while painting.

After they were dry Cody used a pneumatic nail gun to attach them to each riser. You can see them going up below……

making stair risers

Painting the bannisters was a major pain in the butt. They each got two coats of primer and two coats of paint multiplied by 4 sides since I could only paint 1 side at a time. Even though I put on very light coats I still wound up with a lot of drips. They are still not perfect, but as long as you don’t look too close you won’t notice.

When we do the foyer steps, I am planning on spraying the banisters, so I’ll let you know how that goes.

painting banisters

The part of this project that wound up being the most difficult was staining to newel post and handrails. I already had Polyshades Classic Black in the garage and I devised this perfect plan of just giving everything a light sanding followed by a quick wipe down with a TSP substitute. Then magically I would just glaze the handrails with the black stain.  Well I tried that then sat back for 3 days waiting for the stain to dry to no avail. I don’t know if I didn’t mix the stain well enough or it was too humid in the garage, but my plan definitely wasn’t working.

ebony stained handrail

So, on to plan B which involved using a chemical stripper and stripper after wash to remove both the black and original finish. The good news is that after being stripped the ebony stain adhered beautifully. I gave it all two coats of the stain. It already had gloss polyurethane in it, so there was no need for a finish.  The hand rails are my favorite part of the design. I love how glossy they are. It’s like jewelry for the stairs!

stair makeover

We finished each riser with decorative molding under each step. Before we put the molding on the steps looks sort of blah. In fact I kept calling them Ikea steps (as in perfectly functional but white and boring). The molding made all the difference. In the picture above you can see the top riser without molding.

So, there it is! I hope this reveal was as exciting for you as it was for us! I can’t begin to tell you how nice it is to look into the kitchen and not have the stairwell acting as a black hole/energy suck in the room design. In fact, there is actually only one more project (built in banquette) left to do in the kitchen before we can call the room done.

One last question! How do you feel about a runner on the stairs? We’re still torn on the idea and would love to hear your input!

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