Upgrading Carpeted Stairs to Beautiful Wood Part 1

So I’m back at my mom’s house! If you didn’t get the chance to see the other work I’ve done here feel free to check it out now! I upgraded her builder-grade wire pantry shelves to wooden ones! And I madeover her small laundry closet to make it more functional and more beautiful! When my mom built her house, the standard was carpet on the 2nd floor, stairs, and living room. She chose to upgrade her entire first floor to engineered hardwoods but kept the carpet on the stairs and 2nd floor opting for better padding and stainmaster protection instead. Fast-forward 4 years, 2 dogs, and lots of clay later the carpet has NOT warn well. At all. Stain protection or not, that Carolina clay destroys every fiber in its path! And orange carpet was not what she signed up for! So we decided to upgrade these carpeted stairs to wood!

We Begin Upgrading Carpeted Stairs to Wood

To top it off, the house has settled quite a bit and left large cracks in her caulk on the stairs! So when my brother moved out and took his mutts with him, she decided it was finally time for a home refresh! So that’s what I’ve been working on! A top to bottom refresh of her home. And what better place to start then the stairs?!

Carpeted Stairs to Wood Materials

If you’re looking to do a project like this here is a list of the tools and materials I used

Tools

• Miter Saw
• Ryobi Orbital Sander
• Ryobi Corner Cat Sander
• Ryobi Brad Nailer
• Pry Bar (For Tack strips and baseboards)
• Plyers (To remove carpet staples)
• Caulk Gun

Materials

• 1×4 Pine Boards for Landing
• Construction Adhesive
• Liquid Sander (Optional)
• Blue Tape
• Chair Rail
• Plywood ripped down to a width of your choosing
• Your choice of Paint – We used a simple white semi-gloss trim paint
• Your choice of stain – We used Varathane in Dark Espresso
• Polyurethane
• Primed 1x4s as Baseboards
• Caulk

Carpet Removal

I started the stair project by ripping off the carpet and padding.

Stair Landings

The next step was step was to remove the tack strips and baseboards ( I would be replacing these with primed 1×4 MDF boards). Once these were removed and the stairs were vacuumed, I took on the task of the landings. She has 2 landings that are press board on a diagonal. There was no way to sand and stain these so we had to cover them. There were 2 options when it came to covering them. Our first option was to use a single sheet of plywood that we could sand and stain and the second option was to use individual boards laid side by side to create one solid surface. My mom chose to go with the individual board route as we felt it would make for a more rustic look.

I started this task by measuring out each 1×4 board and cut it to size with my table saw. I laid these board with construction adhesive and few nails with my Ryobi Brad Nailer.

Once I had all the boards cut to size, I used a 1×2 and nailed it on the front of the boards to create a “cap”. One thing I learned from DIYs so far is that every cut will not be perfect. It’s just not going to happen. You do the best you can and that’s why they make products like caulk, stainable/paintable wood filler, and paint! Once I had mounted the 1x2s I chose to go back and fill the gaps and the nail holes with stainable wood filler.

Sanding

Then came the most labor intensive and MESSY part of all. SANDING. I used my Ryobi Orbital Sander along with my Ryobi Corner Cat Sander to get every inch of orange dirt off.

I do want to make a note here that there were some hard paint spots (from where they painted the baseboards) that were not coming up with sanding. We chose to use a gel stripper to remove the paint. While this did work really well to remove all of the paint we did not do the best job insuring all of the stripper was removed from each stair. Without the stripper being perfectly removed on every inch your stain will not take evenly! You will end up with a blotchy mess. Luckily ours was in hidden corners and it isn’t too noticable. But don’t make the same mistake we did! Make sure any stripper is off the wood completely before applying stain or paint.

Chair Rail Layout

Now once I was done prepping the stairs, I went to the walls next. We chose to add a chair rail and faux board and batten to the wall. First, I used blue painters tape to lay out where the boards and chair rail would go.

Chair Rail Install

After looking at this, we decided it was too busy and chose to remove every other board. this is why laying it out with tape is so important. You need a good visual first. Next, I started cutting and laying the chair rail boards. I used my Miter saw to get exact cuts. It took a while to figure out how to cut the perfect angles but I finally got it figured out and got the chair rail laid.

I also took this time to rip down my plywood for my faux board and batten boards. I chose to only cut 3.5 inch strips of plywood and adhere to the wall as opposed to using full board on the wall. Then, I cut my baseboards to size.

This was all the prep work that went into making this space beautiful! Please check out Part 2 to this makeover here to see the finished product! Part 2 includes all of the staining, painting, and finish work!