Staircase Remodeling

Staircase Remodeling

Staircase renovation ideas – What do you do with stairs on a budget?..

There are a few ideas. You can go all the way, and get new everything, or if, like us, you have a renovation budget, that was NOT planned for the staircase, then you have to get creative.

We are renovating a house built in 1972. It is not an ancient house, but it has been well used!. The staircase is the first thing you see when you come in the front door, so no matter how much we paint and fix up the entrance, we have to do something about this staircase. But what? For how much?

The staircase in question, has varnished wooden treads, and cheap plywood risers, that are scuffed and worn as well, and had never been painted. The handrail is a wrought iron twisty rail, that you normally would see on a front porch outside. Plus it has been painted a few times, and they had dripped paint on the stairs many years ago, and it was coming off the railing!.

So, armed with my now tiny renovation budget, I figured the best staircase renovation idea for us, was to simply clean, freshen and repaint what we could. Make it look like it belonged.

After we cleaned the stairs and got started. We realized there was no help for the center of the stair tread. So, we decided to get a carpet runner installed and finish the edges of the wooden treads that would show, once the runner was installed. It was going to cost a lot more to carpet the entire stairs, so by adding a runner it was much cheaper. A runner usually is 24 to 27 inches wide.

It was decided that we would work on the outside edges of the stairs to fix them up. I started my sanding as much of the varnish and dripped paint off as I could. I had wanted to stain the stair tread edges, but was concerned at the different shades of the wood, and how that would be accented by stain, which I didn’t want. After many years, some of the varnish that had managed to stay on, had protected the shade of the wood, where as other areas were not quite as protected.

But once the stair edges (about 8 – 10 inches on either end of the wooden stairs) were sanded, and then cleaned of any dust and debris, we decided to use a satin clean varnish to protect and enhance the “aged look” of the wood. We managed to get the paint drips off, which totally helped the look, but I didn’t worry about a few nicks and gouges.

Once two coats of varnish were on, I waited a couple of days for it to be hardened, then put painters tape around each spindle of the handrail (each stair tread had two rails) then I took tremclad paint (metal paint) and I painted each spindle with a foam brush.

This instantly brightened up the railing. Before it was a speckled brown, now it was a deep black. I then painted the stair risers a cream color. The same color the trim was in the rest of the house.

We had a runner created for the stairs, and bound at the edges, then installed. The stairs look great. With a coat of paint on the wall at the side of the staircase, everything looked clean and new.

To replace the handrail would have cost thousands, as it went up the stairs and along a walkway. It took me two hours to paint each spindle with the tremclad, but it was well worth it. Rather than try to hide this old style railing, by painting it with metal paint, it looked like it belonged, and that completed our staircase renovation.

There is another great idea for a staircase renovation or upgrade. If you don’t like the idea of a runner that goes up the riser as well as on the tread. You can have a carpet supplier, create just “tread carpet”. It is tacked to the stair tread, you can do that yourself, and it is even cheaper. Just make sure and clean and paint the stair riser.

Sometimes you have to just work with what you have got. Sure a fancy railing would have looked cool, but the destruction to take it out, and then install, would have taken away from other rooms we are working on.

In a renovation project, you have to decide what is most important to you, and keep your money going there. Everything else, you just have to get creative, or risk budget overload. Believe me, that can happen in a blink of an eye!

Same Place, More Space: 50 Projects to Maximize Every Room in the House

Product Description
Master carpenter and DIY Network host Karl Champley offers 50 home improvement projects to maximize space in any dwelling, no matter how big or small. Keeping an eye on style and economy, Champley outlines tools, materials, and techniques for searching out and using hidden-away space to achieve incredible results. Readers will learn how to carve out shelving niches between studs in the wall, tuck more into kitchen cupboards, build hidey-holes beneath floor boards, and much more. The projects range from easy organization solutions to weekend construction projects and more ambitious undertakings. With easy-to-follow instructions for making more out of less, detailed illustrations, and no-nonsense advice on clutter control, em Same Place, More Space /em makes it simple to create a more functional, expansive, and beautiful home without moving or remodeling.