Ripping the Carpet off Our Stairs

I HATE carpet.  I hate it!  If we could afford it, there would not be one inch of carpet in our house.  We had wood floors put in throughout our downstairs a few years back.  Next up would have been the entire upstairs, but since we haven’t won any lottos, that’s gonna have to wait.

BUT…I did do a bunch of “research” online and found a bunch of blogs of wives ripping the carpet off their stairs all on their own.  I thought, if they can do it, then surely I can too.  After about a year of my researching, getting all my ducks in a row…and easing Kirk into the idea that I could do it, I took the plunge!!

Never mind that I decided to start this project when I was 4 months pregnant…

(Before)

 

Here are my stairs at the beginning.  Nasty stains and all.

YUCK!

 

Pulling the carpet up was the easiest part of this project.  During that process, I thought this whole thing was going to be a breeze!

Until I got to the carpet padding…and all the dang glue the builders used to stick it down…

  That stuff was a nasty mess!

It got everywhere.  It felt gross.  And it was stuck big time!

 

Then there was the glue…

Those builders sure do like their glue!

Sanding didn’t get that stuff off the wood. And I couldn’t just scrape it up, because that started to gauge the wood. I didn’t want to do that since I wanted to keep the original wood. Replacing the wood was not an option for me. That would have cost a fortune! And if I was cool with spending a fortune, then I wouldn’t have been doing this myself in the first place.

So I found some “stuff” at the hardware store. It stunk. But when I rubbed a little on the spots and then scrapped it off, it came up easy-peasy…most of the time.

 

Next up where the nails and the staples.  Good God where there some staples in those stairs!!  The nails came up without a problem.  Most of those came up with the removal of the tack boards (forgot to take pictures of those).  But those staples!  Those were a different story…

Some steps had maybe ½ a dozen staples in them and they came out as easy as can be.

But other steps…  OUCH!

  The steps closer to the bottom floor had about 50 million staples in them.  And they all had to be bunched in the same area.  It was a pain in the you know what trying to get all those out.  But I had to.  I needed these steps to be as smooth as possible.  You know, cause precious little, tiny feet would be traveling 90 MPH up these steps.

 

These pictures above are all staples from one section of a step.  Not from the entire step.  Not from all 14 steps combined.  Just one tiny section.

I’m really sure that one little section needed this many staples.

If you ask me, I think the construction worker working on those steps got a little trigger happy with his staple gun.

  Now that the carpet, padding, track boards, glue, nails and staples are out it’s time for the fun part!

The hours and hours and hours of sanding and wood filling.  And then sanding again and again and again….

  I can’t tell you how many times I went over and over, on my hands and knees, each step feeling them to make sure they were as smooth as can be.

Nobody wants to get a splinter in their foot while walking up some stairs in a house.  I needed them to be perfect…well, as perfect as this pregnant momma could get them anyways.

 

Now for the “fun” part!  Time to paint!

 

This is the look I was originally going for (picture below).  Something along these lines anyways.  But I knew I was going to have to “tweak” my stairs a bit.  (See, told you I did my research!) Since I started this whole project because I was on a budget, I didn’t want to have to replace the wood/steps.  I had to work with what I had.  That being said, my stairs unfortunately didn’t meet up flush against the walls.  I had gaps.  My plan?  Cover those gaps with trim/quarter round. 

(My Inspiration)

  I painted the risers white.  That was the easy part.  Probably the easiest of this entire project.  And the one step that actually went according as planned.

  Next up?  Staining every other step.  You do it this way so you can still walk up your stairs while the stain is drying.  See???  Researched!

  Only, my staining didn’t go according to plan.  I wanted to get a stain that matched my wood floors downstairs.  Something to look similar to.  It started to look pretty.  I could see my vision coming to life!  But then by the second round of stain, my vision was falling apart.  The “stainable” wood filler that I used was not staining.  It wasn’t looking good.  It was looking like a hot mess.  I was bummed. 

So I walked away from this project for a few days
weeks.  I needed a break.  All that hard work to get to this point.

  See the not-so-prettiness?

So Kirk and I decided.  Let’s go black!    Why not make the stairs black and look completely different from the floors downstairs?  So I painted over my stained steps.  I hated to do that.  It wasn’t what I really wanted, but it was going to have to do.  Not all do-it-yourself projects come out as planned, right?

  They’re not what I wanted.  There are flaws that irritate me.  But they are waaaaaaay better than that nasty old carpet, so they’ll have to do!

  (Notice the tip of a green gun in the bottom corner?  That would be Allan checking for zombies.  Don’t worry, whenever you come to our house you’ll be glad to know that you are 100% safe in a zombie-free house, thanks to Allan.)

So the downstairs are carpet free.  The stairs are carpet free.  Wonder if Kirk would like to rip some carpet up and lay some hardwood floors down upstairs….

Yeah, I’m not holding my breath.