Stair Remodel...Step by Step...Part 1

Every spring I get this urge to do some kind of home improvement project and this spring is no exception. Actually I started playing with Pinterest and I have a huge list of home improvement projects to do this go around.

Before

Our stairs have been carpeted since they moved in. This wasn't so bad at first, but the cats had apparently decided to use the steps as their own giant scratching posts (despite the many scratching posts I have for them),  leaving tears and hole in the carpet. I also grew very tired of dragging our big vacuum up and down the steps, using the little hose to vacuum though I could never seem to get the steps as clean as the rest of the floor.

I got a quote from a professional on replacing the carpet with hardwood. It was a few thousand dollars and I couldn't justify the expense.

Then came Pinterest...and I saw someone else had redone their stairs. So I started searching and found a great tutorial here and did a lot of research on stair parts.

What lies beneath - carpet padding,
tack strips, and a mess

And then I said to my husband, let's rip up the carpet. So we carefully pulled back one step (at the top of the stairs around the corner where no one would see) to see what we were dealing with.

Wasn't too bad...tack strips and carpet padding, but the actual ODF treads underneath are terrible and whoever cut them obviously wasn't too concerned with making the edges straight. We could do this.

So in our zeal we went to Lowe's and picked up oak "retro treads." They're called retro treads because they're cut thinner so you can place them on top of the existing ODF treads. Otherwise if you're doing the whole thick tread, you have to deal with removing all of the existing treads and attaching the new treads to the stringers directly, and that is a big pain. Not to mention a safety issue - stairs have to be uniformly high and wide for accident avoidance.

We then returned home to tear up all the carpet and tack strips on the bottom half of the stairs (and by "we" I mean my handy husband).  Those carpet staples are not fun to get up.

Nosing Sawed Off
 Subtreads are now flush with the risers

If you notice, the lovely particle board tread have rounded edges that the carpet fits over. To use the retrotreads, you have to have a flat edge. So we used a combination square to measure how much needed to be cut off, then screwed a 1x3 down a long the line to act as a guide for the circular saw. This part was incredibly messy and got sawdust everywhere, and set off the smoke alarms three times.

Tread Tool

Now that the subtreads are flush with the risers (the part of the step that's vertical), it was time to start cutting our retrotreads. Of course, not a single step is the same shape. Shocking. So the hubby found a "tread tool" online at a box store, which are the metal pieces you see in the photo. You attach those metal pieces to a 1x2 board, adjust them to the right angle for each step and tighten down. You can then pick it up in the middle, lay it down on your new tread, and mark your lines for cutting.

Note: Learn from our mistake and label the "front" of the tread tool (after the photo above I wrote it on the 1x2). Otherwise you can cut the new tread backwards. Fortunately because each step is a slightly different shape, the tread that was cut backwards fit another step. 

After this handy hubby cut each tread with the circular saw using a finishing blade and fit it into its new home. This did result in some minor wall damage and lots of swearing. (During this process, I was distracted by the ugly flat builder mirror in the powder room and decided to take it down which led to holes in the wall there and a new project which I will cover in another post).

All bottom treads are cut and fitted!
Now to take them back to the garage for staining.

But now the bottom ones are all cut and labeled by number so I can start staining! They're looking good! We're going to stain them dark to match all our dark cherry wood and install white risers.

Ralph is not a fan of demolition.

The landings will be the next challenge...

See the whole project:

Stair Remodel...Step by Step...Part 2 Treads and Risers

Stair Remodel...Step by Step...Part 3 The Landings