Wood stairs vs carpeted stairs

I pulled the 1970s carpet off of mine and just left the 2x12 stairs and risers exposed. I re trimmed all the outside and inside corners with new 1x cypress. It looks good to me. When I get the wood floors re finished I’ll probably have them sanded and stained

if yours is like mine you’ll have a couple thousand brads to remove and you’ll need a flat tool to get all the carpet fibers out of the seams

quote:

---

if yours is like mine you’ll have a couple thousand brads to remove and you’ll need a flat tool to get all the carpet fibers out of the seams

---

That does sound like a pain in the arse

I did replace my handrails a while back and stained them myself. Was think of doing that for treada and buying oak trees to stain. Those prestained caps looks like a decent idea too.

I had carpet stairs in my old place until the carpet on one of the steps came loose. Took about 2 weeks of "I'll get to that over the weekend" before I had 3 steps where the carpet came off. Plus, they were a PITA to clean, especially with pets.

I ripped it out and went with wood stairs. Because of the condition of the wood, I decided to replace the entire setup. I found treads at HD and only had to cut to size and stain. I then used a 1"x8" to cut the risers and painted them white.

This also let me finally see the area under my stairs and immediately spun off into an under stairs storage area project. Which was my first sheetrock job; thankfully it was in a closet that I planned to put up shelving all over

wood and its not even close.

be warned though, this may not be as easy as you think; our carpeted stairs were a nightmare after it was removed; the crap they passed off as risers and treads and spacing was amateur-hour. the thick carpet hid all kinds of issues.

ended up costing us around $3k total to have some professionals come in and 'rebuild' our stairs, make sure each step was square, even and same height and do all the little trim work to make it look professional.

10/10 would do it again in a heartbeat and not bat an eye.

Yea we have two dogs and they keep it plenty dirty. Especially since we got our fence replaced two months ago and the perimeter is still mostly dirt.

Sounds like there's not too many downsides to wood so maybe I'll finally start on it. I'm slow with all of my projects this could take a while.

I was criticized for carpeting my stairs. So far I don't regret it. I wanted quiet, easy and cheap. I can rip it off and put new down in one day for about $100 in materials.


That said, I wouldn't cover up decent wood stairs with carpet. And I don't have inside dogs.