Our stairwell makeover was one of our first larger projects where we really utilized some of the heavier tools, i.e. an air compressor and a jigsaw. After installing the laminates in our family room, we had some knowledge of what to expect under carpet but it was still a big endeavor. We knew there would be tack strips, nails and a carpet pad, but what was a little different this time is that we didn’t know what type of wood would be under the carpet. The type of wood would have changed some of the early design decisions. The wood that we uncovered wasn’t ideal, we think it’s particle board, however we were still able to paint over it and it still turned out pretty great! Our total cost came out to just under $200; three 8 ft carpet runners from target, paint, a piece of plywood, a few pieces of trim and staples.

Link to our Project Checklist

Tools 🛠needed for this project (link to our project check list here):

  • Razor Blade (If you have the same carpeted stairs set up as us you will need to cut the carpet at the top of the stairs)
  • Paint Brushes (we recommend the 2 inch chisel brush, easy to hold and allows you to get those tough to paint corners)
  • Frog Tape (if you’re painting and need that precision, Ana just likes to freehand it with a steady hand)
  • Nose Pliers (to pull out all the nails under the carpet
  • Crow bar (for the tack strips that hold the carpet down, you can also use a flat head and a hammer)
  • Air Compressor, staple gun and staples
  • Jigsaw & blade* (This is optional, our flat platform area half way up the stairs was really rough looking, so we had to buy a piece of ply wood and cut it to size with the jigsaw) – you could probably get away with cutting the board at Lowes or Home Depot and then hand sawing any small notches
  • A few feet of trim pieces, for the ply wood* (Again optional, depends on the wood that you unveil, we used quarter rounds to cover up the edges between the ply wood and the wall)

Like I mentioned earlier, this project was the first time where we really used some of those heavier tools, like an air compressor and a jig saw. Using those heavier power tools can be a bit intimidating. The more you use them the easier it gets, that’s for sure. If you’re ever uncomfortable, pull up youtube and just watch people using them. Watching others use the tools and learning from their techniques helped me and Ana feel comfortable with our projects.

The easy part was to remove the carpet, we started at the bottom of the stairs, used some nose pliers to pull the carpet up, then we just went to town and started ripping up the carpet! Don’t forget there should be those little tack strips near the edges of where the carpet was attached to, so if you have doggos running around try to block them off. Now just as a heads up, we salvaged the carpet pads (the 90’s looking material) because we installed runners back onto the stairs and needed the carpet pads for extra cushion. Those carpet pads are super easy to tear up, so take it slow and try to salvage large pieces, if you plan on reusing it. I’ll explain later in the post as to how we ended up reusing the carpet pads.

As you can see in the pics above, we weren’t so lucky and unveiled particle board. It was still paintable and we didn’t do much to change it, but depending on the type of wood that we were working with we would’ve changed our design choices. Under the carpet pad we found a TON of nails and staples. In the areas that we weren’t going to cover up with a runner, we removed every nail and staple that was visible, we covered the holes with a coat of spackle and then finished with a light sand see below.

In the pic above you can see what our stairs looked like underneath everything. Our platform area (the fourth step) was in pretty rough condition (pic top left), I couldn’t even tell you what type of wood it was.

We laid out the runner to see how far in we needed to paint and realized that we needed a little bit more rug to make it cover the 4 stairs and the platform. Not too big of a bummer but it required us to buy an additional rug just for the 6 inches that we needed.

We purchased a piece of ply wood and cut that to size and trimmed (using quarter rounds – visible in a later picture) that out along the edges. You can also see in the pic above that we removed those staples and nails in all of the stair tread, but only spackled in the visible areas.

After we spackled the edges we went right into painting. We started with a coat of primer, then finished with the high traffic paint.

As the paint was drying we cut out the rectangles of the salvaged carpet pads. As you can see we used the pads on the footer and stapled 3 in the back footer, 1 on each edge and 4 on the underside. We followed a similar stapling pattern when laying the carpet runners on, adding 2 more staples on the riser on each edge. When laying the runner try to pull the carpet tight and shaped to the stair before stapling.

For joining two carpets we cut the carpet so that way the design would continue flowing into the next seamlessly. In the pic above you can see that we went as far as we could with the one runner and then just added the second runner right over and stapled them together.

As you can tell from the first picture in this post, we didn’t stop here. Over time we realized the there was just too much WHITE on the stairs & walls. We also noticed that dirt and dust tends to show easier on the white. So one day, Ana said she was fed up with it and just free handed this dark charcoal paint. It turned out even better than before. The terra cotta planter and the rubber plant really draw out the colors in the rug and stairs – ooof.

Project Completed June 2, 2018