Stairs: Replacing Carpeting with Wood

Replacing carpeting on stairs is simple unless you've got unusual tread shapes. With several pie shaped treads at the bottom of these stairs, we decided to have them made locally versus relying on the manufacturer's supplier, just in case we ran into further problems. Luckily everything worked out well.

We planned for new stair treads plus removal and disposal of the carpeting and padding. What we didn't know was the risers (vertical wood) also needed to be replaced due to builder quality stairs found.

What It Takes to Replace Carpeting on Stairs

When you think about replacing your carpets with hardwood flooring, you realize it's a big job but not too complicated. That's probably true if your rooms, hallways and stairs are square with no unusual shapes. When remodeling a condo, we had no problems with the bedrooms and hallways but the lower set of stairs presented a few more challenges.

Here are the steps we took to upgrade the stair carpeting (below left) with hardwood treads. It was a bit tricky orchestrating all the pieces of the puzzle, as we couldn't buy the stair pie treads pre-finished from the same manufacturer as the rest of the flooring, so we decided to finish all the steps the same way.

• Removed the stair carpeting and padding first …
• Measured the regular stair treads and made templates of the pie shaped steps (below right)
• Ordered stair treads at a local woodworking shop
• Removed remainder of the carpeting and padding
• Replaced risers as the quality of the builder stairs was poor and the staples and time to prepare them for painting would cost more than replacing them.
• Disposed of carpeting, padding and old risers.
• Installed new stair treads, stained and applied 3 coats of polyurethane.
• Painted the risers white.

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