Welcome to Thunderdome

This is part of a bigger room refresh, new carpet, paint, trim. But the big part will be the stair steps, from which I will be pulling carpet, and staining/finishing the hard wood that is underneath.

At first I didn't even know what was underneath... I was hoping it would NOT be particle board. All you can do with that is replace it, or put a thin veneer over it. I wasn't crazy about either idea, and at that point would probably just decide to put new carpet back over it.

But I youtubed "how to pull carpet off stairs," saw how easy it was, and started yanking. If you have carpeted steps, you'd be surprised how little is holding it into place. A pair of pliers to get a grip at a seam, and then for the most part it's all just tacked into place.

There's a single step between living room and kitchen...
That's twin 2x8s for the step, side by side. The weird thing is that they left a 1/8" gap between them.... my best guess is so they wouldn't squeek when you stepped on it, and they rubbed together. But that means I have to either decide to leave that gap and hope the dark stain hides it, or I need to remove one of the boards, nailed down by large 12 penny nails, and probably dent up the wood, in order to move it that 1/8". Right now I'm leaning toward "see how it looks after the dark stain is applied." I think it'll be hardly noticeable, and I'll learn to ignore it.

Other small problem is that there's about 100 staples in it. They stapled the shit out of the last 2 generations of padding, and just hammered them flat when padding was replaced. I started pulling them with pliers, but that was ripping up my fingers and I have a specialized "pull staples from wood" tool waiting for me at the post office.

Here's the beginning of the main staircase.
Staples to be removed, and it needs to be sanded well. No prob, just bought a new orbital sander. Problem here is that damn gap between the stairs and the wall that ranges from 1/2", to over 3/4". If it was just a "Put down trim and quarter-round to hide it" issue that would be easy, but you pretty much can't trim that gap where the lip of the stairs is. Hard to describe that in text. But I'll show you what solution I come up with... it will likely be clever and attractive.

But that's where I am today.

Having done some stair work in the past. I do NOT recommend sanding, then staining the stairs, then calling it done. Does it look good? Yep. But it doesn't feel good when you slip on in while in socks and fall on your ass. Sure, you've only got two steps to fall down, but it only takes one to fuck up your tailbone. Everyone in our house slipped down the stairs at least once. This house, we are installing a runner.

I'm doing stair work at this house too. I'll start another thread so I don't clutter yours up.

I have already ripped up carpet on two full sets of stairs this year.

On the set to the basement we put in new carpet.

On the set between the first and second floor we're doing wood with a runner.

Anti-slip stair finish.

https://prudentreviews.com/how-to-make- ... -slippery/

Stairs are cleaned up, time to do some sanding. Hundreds of fucking staples. A $10 staple-pulling-tool was a good purchase. About half way up the riser wood changed from plywood, to pine. It will change the grain patter, but I can work with it.
Have the atrium all stripped down and ready to go. When all the pictures were removed from the walls, trim taken off, and better lightbulbs installed, I can't believe how cruddy it is. Very much looking forward to painting tomorrow. And I hope the folding-coat closet-doors will take stain.... they feel awfully smooth and finished. If they have finish, it wont take stain. I'll have to sand it off. A lot of sanding. Sigh.

Been on it every day.

Here's that entryway/coat closet:
Love every aspect of it. The dark blue makes our entryway portrait pop.

And decided to paint the living room accent wall the same color, so any spatters would be cleaned up in the stairs sanding process.

(edit - I don't know why sometimes attached images post twice. Didn't post them twice, and they aren't there twice in a post edit)
Tested the new orbital sander tonight, it will get it done. Problem is nothing is getting shipped from CHina, and I couldn't get any extra orbital sanding pads from Menard's. Going to try Home Depot, tomorrow. It really is a show stopper, the pad that came with the sander won't get it done.

ALso just watched a YouTube vid about how to paint straight lines on textured walls... they are my bane. But now I know a trick, and I'll be picking up some paintable silicone from HD tomorrow, as well....

Phase 1 - Entryway

Phase 2 - Sand/finish stairs

Phase 3 - Paint living room

Carpet install on July 27

Phase 3.5 - redo the trim around the living room

Phase 1 - complete
So it turns out the existing folding doors, here and there, DO already have finish over them, and they won't take stain. I'm going to make that a problem for another day... sanding them thoroughly is possible, but will take SO long. I think I'm either going to try to learn to live with the SPLASH OF BROWNER WOOD as accents in the room, or... more likely... just buy new doors in the future, and stain them to match the rest of the wood.,

I'm about to stink up the house, staining those stairs.

Yes, it's stinky in here.

If you sand plywood enough, it will look nice under stain. Landing and risers are plywood, but it works.

A few days of progress, now on hold for a Utah trip.

Stairs look good under a couple coats of poly, but there's a shitload of trim work to do after the carpet is installed on July 27.

Haven't updated in a while. Carpet is in, and it's great. Had to redo a bunch of paint in the doorways where they scraped it all off the corners, moving the carpet around. But otherwise, looks great.

Painting done. Room trim done. I repainted the existing registers from white to black, with some spray paint I already had on-hand... when I painted different vent covers black, from white, during the basement project.

Here's the before/after of trimming out the stairs.

I got lucky that what was under the carpet wasn't particle board... but I think they always intended carpeting, so they made no effort to make the boards fit nicely. Trim fixes it.

Plain ol' pine trim, one coat of stain, one coat of polyurethane, sand it smooth, second coat of poly. WHen all done I'll put one more coat of poly on the entire stairway to seal the trim down to it.

Before After The silly angle of one step lines up to the silly angle of the next step. I think it looks cool.

Just cut the very last piece of trim for the stairs. It's a good feeling.

All done, more or less. The close-ups are the one side of the stairway, the other side isn't trimmed out yet, because that wall isn't painted yet. DOn't know what color the hallway will be.

And now for the first time, giving it actual thought, I should have painted it blue like the other wall. Sigh. The wall I DID paint was an accent wall for the living room. In my mind I didn't include the opposite wall in the project, because it can't be seen from the living room. Again, sigh.

Anyway, 100% of trim, as included in the original plan, is done.

I measure and cut a piece, and put it in place to make sure it fits. Half the time I need to take it back out to the saw to fine tune the cut a little.... most of these steps have slightly different measurements. 4 and a quarter inches, the next is 4 and three eights... etc. So I measure and cut a dozen or so pieces (about 100 in this project, overall), and then stain/poly as a group. So I number them so I know where each piece fit. Almost every piece of trim on these stairs has a number on the other side, heh.
Before the last bit of trim. When sanding the unfinished stairs, it's hard to get the sander in those corners. Trim hides it:
After:
I just like how I cut the trim on these stair corners. Angled, and sligthly offset from the corner. It makes it interesting for the eye. Very creative of the carpenter!
Big picture:
And at the top, I added some new baseboard. There wasn't any at all on the left, and the stuff straight-on had been cut to build-in a curio cabinet, which moved away after the divorce. That's original hallway carpet.... I just tacked in the baseboards so they can be removed when it is time to paint/recarpet the hallway.
++++

WHen I estimate materials, I do all the measurements and determine exactly how many sticks of *whatever* I need. Then I add 10% for errors. Then I add one more stick of each, "One more for Jesus," I always mutter to myself.

At the end of this project, I have exactly one stick of each thing left. I estimated just right, and Jesus didn't need his.

I'll post pics one more time when the new furniture is delivered in a couple weeks, and the pictures are back on the wall.

GORDON wrote: Then I add one more stick of each, "One more for Jesus," I always mutter to myself.

Lol. Always round-up.

GORDON wrote: I estimated just right, and Jesus didn't need his.

He'll pick it up when he comes again.

Ten bonus points if you know from which movie "One more for Jesus" is from, without googling.

It's so obscure it may not even be on google.

GORDON wrote: Ten bonus points if you know from which movie "One more for Jesus" is from, without googling.

It's so obscure it may not even be on google.

Even with google I couldn't find it.

I'll give Leisher a shot.

It comes up if you Google it with the actual movie name