DIY Stairs renovation

After doing our Pantry remodel http://www.inspiredyummies.com/#!Our-Pantry-Remodel/s4lvh/56076a150cf2a7bb74b9461a , I started looking on Pinterest for more DIY ideas to change up our house, and stumbled upon this great tutorial on how to transform your carpeted stairs, to hardwood shown here: http://www.remodelaholic.com/entry-staircase-makeover-reveal/

It seemed easy enough to take out our carpeting, but as we were taking it out, my hubby thought it would be nice to take out the entire wall with the railing, and put in spindles instead. So this is how OUR process went! (Can you tell that it was Halloween at the time?)

First we tore out our old carpet, and busted out the walls where the railing is sitting, to see what was in there, so we knew whether or not we could proceed with demo'ing.

Fortunately we were working with studs and no wiring!! Then we proceeded to cut the studs down to each stair tread, making it easier to extend the size of our treads 6 more inches! (the amount of space the wall took up)

We ripped out every other stair tread (so we could still go upstairs) and replaced it with a new one, that was measured and cut to fit our new stair length.

When those were done, I proceeded to cut and add the rest of the treads. At this point we were getting pretty excited, even without the railing!

After I filled the screw holes and sanded the wood down, I added two coats of stain... yay!! We used walnut stain, and it was beautiful! The stain didn't match the floors below EXACTLY, but because the floors throughout the rest of the house are varigated, it still seemed to fit well.

Onto the risers!! I painted our risers white before we installed them, so that I wouldn't accidentally drip paint onto our newly stained wood...and then touched up the paint later.

Then came the polyurethane! While applying it, I sanded in between each coat. We did every other stair through this process as well, so that we were still able to make it upstairs.

While we were waiting for the polyurethane to dry, I started building out the column at the foot of the stairs. This was also by the front door, so I wanted to give it some 'presence'.

I used 2x4's and wooden blocks to build it out some, and then proceeded to cover those with MDF.

By this time, the polyurethane was completely dry, so we were able to start adding the railing and spindles. I layed the railing along the stairs and marked the placement of the walls on each end of the railing. We cut and installed it at 36" high, and then added the spindles about 4" apart, keeping up with the building codes.

After we were finished the stairs, I started working on the small detail work. I added picture frame molding, puttied holes, added chair rails, sanded and painted...whew! What a job this became for us!

We ended up waiting quite awhile (almost a year!), to finish the landing and the second set of stairs.

When we did get around to it, we went through the same process with this set as we did with the first, but this time we ended up just buying a newel post for the bottom of this one, instead of building it...it made the process MUCH easier, and I actually think it goes well with the rest of our

houses' design!

This angle shows the landing in which I installed click-lock flooring...

And Ta-Da!!!!!!! All done!! This was one of the most challenging projects we did...we researched A LOT, and put in a lot of hours, but I think it was definitely worth it!! And I don't have to vacuum up the stairs anymore!!

I hope you come back and join me, to see more of our projects that we have done over the last couple of years!