Carpet to Wood ~ Staircase Update

It's Friday and I have big plans for this weekend,
hopefully I'll get the staircase priming and painting finished!

Here's where we are now...

After removing all the carpet,

carpet tack strips,

staples and nails,

we began removing the paint, filling all the holes and sanding...

If you remember our stair treads and risers are pine,
the type of wood intended to stay underneath carpet, but we decided to see what we can do with it
and were happy to find the front of the treads were bullnose even though the exposed ends are just a straight cut.

When the spindles were originally painted some got on the stair treads so we used paint remover to loosen it up...

These lower spindles are too close!

It's been tough trying to get the paint removed around them.

I have to admit I'm not looking forward to working in this tight spot when I stain this stair tread and repaint these spindles...

Here we have applied paint thinner...

and are scraping off the paint...

Most of the paint came off the stair treads but not all of it,

thankfully the stain adhered just fine...

Time to fill all the holes and gaps with some wood filler...

We used Minwax stainable wood filler which is very grainy, like small pieces of saw dust, and it worked great!  It was easy to use, sand, and it took the stain perfectly as you'll see in a bit...

There were many tack holes and gaps to fill...

Ellie-Mae, my right-hand pup, was always close by.

Here she is peeking at me from the top of the stairs...

Once the holes and gaps were filled with wood filler it was time to sand.

Starting out I used my DeWalt hand sander with a very coarse paper...

For the tighter areas I used a sanding block covered with the coarse paper...

Plastic was placed over the open doorways to keep the dust contained in the foyer

and 

to help keep the dust down I would vacuum after sanding every two to three stairs, it was DUSTY!

The exposed sides of the stair treads are a rough cut so I went over the flat edge a number of times with the electric sander and a coarse sandpaper.

To soften the edges I angled the sander just enough to round the edges a bit...

I was thrilled when my cabinet maker gave me some extra cherry stain that he had on hand, it worked perfectly!  Here I had applied one coat to a stair tread...

It looked pretty good, so I did a few more...

and then did them all...

Actually,

I stained two stair treads, skipped three, stained the next two, skipped the next three...

this gave me room to work and go back up and down easily to work on the areas just coated...

A closer view of the stain and pine wood grain...

In between the three coats of stain I sanded each stair tread by hand using fine sandpaper.

I knew I was going to repaint the side molding, stair treads and spindles so I didn't focus on being too neat.  One of the hardest parts was making sure underneath the lip of the stair tread was totally covered with stain.  I used a short handled sponge brush for this...

Here the staircase has three coats of stain...

It was perfect timing to remove the carpet from the stairs because when the kitchen remodel is completed all the existing hardwoods will be recoated.

The newly installed floors will be getting an oil base sealer and 3 coasts of poly finish.

The last coat will be applied when the kitchen project is completely finished and this is when the existing floors will be redone.

While the guys were here applying the finish to the new hardwoods, they are doing the staircase for us too!  Applying sealer, light hand sanding in between with a fine sandpaper, then sealing again with a total of three coats of poly finish.

The staircase after one coat of sealer and one coat of poly, the poly is still drying...

And once dry...

The second coat of poly is being added today and the final coat will hopefully be done in two weeks, that's when the kitchen should be finished...Yippee!

This weekend I hope to begin priming the molding, risers, spindles and if all goes well paint them too!

You can see how the staircase started here...Carpet to Wood ~ Staircase DIY

Thanks so much for coming by!

I hope you are enjoying following along...Kitchen Remodel Diary

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