Stairs- Tread and Runner

The biggest issue with my stairs has been what to do with the tread? Let me back up- a few years ago, my husband and I were SICK of the nasty carpet on our stairs. It was old and stained. We toured a bunch of nice homes for Utah’s Parade of Homes and got the idea to tear out the carpet, and wallpaper and paint the stairs. Well, it looked beautiful! And then I decided to put on a coat of polyurethane to protect the wallpaper and everything turned a gross color of yellow and started bubbling. It was a total loss. But we lived with it for a few years. In the winter little paw prints show up from the snow and the air holes hold in dirt. Pretty much, they were a mess!

So last December, I decided to take off the polyurethane on the sides, paint those white and add a stair runner down the middle. My husband wasn’t a big fan of that plan, so my stairs have sat half unfinished for almost a year (face palm).SO embarrassing, right?! Well, once we decided to put laminate flooring in our home at the top and the bottom of the stairs, we thought we should put it on the stairs too. The problem is that I couldn’t find an inexpensive way to do this. My flooring does have a coordinating stair tread:

But at $54.98 for each stair with 14 stairs to cover, it came to $769.72- SO expensive!!! We spent $1000 for flooring, tools, and underlayment for our entry, living room, kitchen, and hall so $770 felt just obscene. I started brainstorming other options. Finally I came up with an idea- what if, instead of having wood all of the way across, we have a small section of wood on each side and then a runner down the middle? It can have a nice cushy pad underneath so it is the same height as the wood. I loved the idea, but my husband wasn’t convinced that it would look good. Then, I was visiting a friend with a new, super fancy house, and her stairs had exactly what I was envisioning! (You have to look close, it’s not obvious, but the the wood stops and then there is super soft carpet, and then there is wood on the other end).

With this option, I would only need 4 pieces- $220 felt much more reasonable. Plus, there would be a lot less waste this way (the treads come in 47″ lengths and my stairs are only 33″ wide). So we placed the order and 3 weeks later, the wrong pieces arrived. Ugh! Those were returned and we placed another order and those took 3 weeks to arrive. 2 of the pieces came in and were super damaged. I was so bugged! So those were returned. We have the last pieces arriving any day now, but this will definitely be a crunch time project!

Now that I had my plan in place, it was time to finish scraping off the old paint off the stairs. I had started last December, but never finished. Here is the process that I followed and all of the tools. Pretty much, I used stripper on the paint, let it sit and then sanded or scraped it off (depending on how stubborn it was).

I got down to the wood and then cleaned up, and painted the trim and riser white.

Next, we needed to figure out which runner we wanted. I looked on Pinterest for inspiration and still love the idea of a grey runner. I love that it will hide dirt and is a nice neutral.

Image Via

I have always heard great things about Dash & Albert runners from Annie Selke, so I went on their website to see if I could find anything I liked. I found a few I loved, but landed on this one:

It comes in a 20′ length, which is perfect! So everything is on it’s way. Hopefully we will have time to get it all installed by next week for the reveal of the One Room Challenge! We cut the top stair of wood and put the Cap a Treads that we have on and then laid the extra on the next step so you can kind of see how it will look:

cutest model ever!

We still have lots of work, but we think it will be great!

***Update*** The stairs turned out so beautifully! Here is a picture of the final result:

If you are just now joining us, Here is the plan and before photos from week 1:

Here is how I painted it from grey to white (without a ladder) from week 2:

Here is how I added the picture molding trim on the stairs, even with the crazy angles from week 3:

Here is how we added in art for the perfect Stair gallery wall:
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