Remove Carpet from Stairs & Staining: Do It Yourself

 

How To Remove Carpet from Stairs

This past weekend I once more lost my wits and started a project unexpectedly when I set out to remove carpet from the stairs. Here’s a quick post recapping my carpet removal adventures before I forget the entire process.

Let’s get right to the point, what you are actually after; the before and after.

Before and After

Why Remove the Carpet from Stairs

Now that that’s over with, more detail. I’ve had my eye on removing the carpet from the stairs for some time. The stairs are the heart of our home. In our little house, you can see the living room and the kitchen from the stairs, all while yelling up them to anyone who may be in the bedrooms. Plus it’s one of the dogs’ absolute favorite hang out spots so we spend a lot of time on them. Can only imagine the amount of dog hair and dusts these stairs have accrued?

Removing the Carpet

Last Friday evening, I impulsively followed through on Operation Carpet Removal after spending the ten minute car ride from a restaurant researching what other people have done. One things that was commonly stated was that if you have rounded caps on your stairs, you may actually have hardwood underneath. From memory, I thought we did. So I arrived home, staple gun in hand just in case there was only plywood, and peeled back a piece of carpet with a pair of needle nose pliers.

See how the stairs have that rounded little lip on the tread? That’s how I knew there might be some sort of flooring under there instead of just plywood. 

I continued pulling up the carpeting using some combination of a razor blade to cut the carpet away from the way, the needle nose pliers to tug with to avoid staples, and the back of the hammer to pull the tacking up.

Some of the tacking was particularly stuck so I wedged a flat head screw driver under it and tapped with the hammer.

The bottom five stairs were individually carpeted but once I got to the top, the carpet was all one piece. So I started from the top and ripped all the way down. In total, it took about 4 hours to remove the carpet from the stairs start to finish. I had to be extra specially careful about picking up all of the nails after each step because of the pups. I wasn’t sure how long this would take me so I removed almost all the nails in one fell swoop.

Remus, my trusty night guard and diy partner in crime, manned the project from his usual spot at the top of the stairs well into the night.

Prepping the Stairs

Looking at the stairs, there was clearly over spray on the baseboard and on the stairs. Knowing I wanted to stain the steps, I picked up this stripper that a colleague at work recommended. It felt less toxic than any stripper I’ve used before and had a great citrus scent. I  would absolutely recommend it if you have pets or small children because I didn’t feel like I was gagging them with this product which was important since Remus insists on sitting so close to the work zones.

I coated the stairs with the Citristrip starting at the bottom, painting each stair with a cheap chip brush and a heavy hand and worked my way right to bed. It can be left on for 24 hours so I left it over night.

The next morning I scraped it off relatively easily and wiped up the remaining ashy coating with mineral spirits that I had lying around as recommended by the product label. I then started patching up the stairs with wood filler and began painting the backs of the stairs white after it dried.

I sanded each stair by hand with a 300 and 800 grit. I used the sandpaper I had around with no firm logic for the grit choice. I am really glad though that I sanded by hand because there was a lot of staples that I missed. People aren’t joking when they say it feels like a million staples. Thankfully most of them were against the backs of the stairs and underneath the rounded part of the tread so no harm to the dogs.

Finishing the Stairs

After painting the backs white, I repeated the process of painting my way up to the tops of the step only this time with stain. I used a thin coat on each tread and painted my way to the top around 9pm. It takes stain at least 6 hours to dry to the touch which means we couldn’t come down until the next morning. Around 6am, I came down stairs to have a first look of an almost completed stair after I removed the carpet. This is the first look of the stain with no rubbing or smudging off.

I gave the stairs a second coat of stain. Painting with a chip brush and smudging behind me with a microfiber rag this time. I went up the stairs for another night. The next morning I pulled out the caulk gun to touch up the edge. See the next two pictures for the difference between before caulk and after.

See how the edges are all filled in. Also notice how light the stairs are now after the smudging process. I am thinking of giving them another coat and leaving it but I like the patterns that have settled in here. Plus I am tired of dealing with the stairs.

Later on this week I will go in and do more touch ups like to the wall where it meets the stairs but I want to wait to figure out what color I want to paint this hallway. What ever color I paint will wrap around the entire downstairs and the upstairs hallway because there’s no true break in the walls. So I want to choose wisely. In the mean time, I am just going to enjoy this “completed” project.