Staircase Redo (part 1)

We're doing a big kitchen renovation (including raising the ceiling height by 12 inches!), so expect photos of that soon. In the meantime, I thought I'd share some photos of my staircase update. I didn't record my process with step-by-step photos on this one, so it's really just before and after shots, but I think you'll like them.

Before we bought the house, this was the first thing you saw when you walked in:

BEFORE (click to enlarge)

In just this area, we painted the wall white, ripped up the floor carpet, and painted the grate, but never got around to dealing with the stairs until now.

Ripping up that carpet and tacks wasn't too difficult, just time consuming - and although there were some sticky, ugly, plastic squares glued to the treads, those too came up fairly easily. Next came sanding up all the odd bits of glue and such, after which I got this:

Top landing (click to enlarge)

Ready for staining! (click to enlarge)

As with the baseboards and doors in the other rooms, I used Minwax 'Red Oak 215' stain to match the wood elsewhere in the house. The tricky part was keeping the cats off the stairs, and doing only one half at a time so I could still get upstairs to bed. (The family were away for a long weekend, so that helped.) In the end, I got:

Finished pending carpet runner (click to enlarge)

I also picked up several pieces of moulding (the same kind that I used in the office/library renovation), which I pre-stained and then added to the base of each riser to cover some gaps between the risers and treads. They look like this:

Moulding (click to enlarge)

Stained and installed moulding (click to enlarge)

Our next step will be to put a carpet runner (with an appropriately vintage design and rods, of course) down the center. I'll post that 'part 2' here when it happens!