Then using a straight edge, I used a level, I continued the lines from the treads and risers onto my skirt.

Easy peasy so far. You might notice that some of my steps don't quite reach the skirt, don't worry too much about that. Once all your steps are marked you need to cut those little triangles out.

Now for the word painting. After you cut all the triangles out your skirt will actually fit into the voids above the steps, although not perfectly. There will be gaps in some spots and none in others. As disappointing as this may sound, you will need to re-trace and cut your stair notches. To do that I used my trusty level again, but this time I laid it on its side so that I would be marking my skirt about an inch above my steps. Once you've re-traced your treads and risers and cut along the new lines your skirt should fit like a glove. The last steps for cutting your skirt is to rip some of the height off, and cut the top and bottom ends off. I marked the height of my skirts at 3" above the old tread so they would all be consistent. At the top of the stairs I cut the riser so it would sit flush with the exsisting floor, and at the bottom of the stairs I cut it perpendicular to the floor about an inch and a half in front of the bottom riser. Hopefully that description helps, but if your still confused just leave me a comment with your question below.

This is an almost finished skirt. You can see I still have to cut the top (flush with the flooring) and bottom (perpendicular to the floor) bits off, but the height has been cut.

Moving on to the risers. Since one side of the staircase is open I was excited to skip the measuring part. I took the railing down to make things a little easier, and to add an element of danger! Dunt dunt dunnnnn.

Then I placed my riser material in its future home...

And marked my cut line from the back. My plan for this ugliness is to make a skirt but for under the stairs (like this). I figure I will need to install the skirt and risers before I start to trace my steps and cut this other skirt, so that's where I'm at for now.

I'm hoping for some decent weather (not freezing or windy) so I can finish painting these pieces this weekend. Also, we ordered the treads last week and they should be here by Monday evening. I've got a little more figuring out to do with these new treads (some of which will require some help from my dad), but I'm hopeful I don't 1) ruin them and 2) it doesn't take forever.

Nikki Kelly

Yep, we finished the bottom half (also the more visible half) of the stairs, but not without a late-in-the-game-hiccup. Picking up from where we left off (cutting the treads to size), it was time to stain! Since we wanted them to match our hardwood floors that we put in I had taken a scrap piece of tread wood and a spare piece of flooring to Sherwin Williams to get a stain match.

When I picked it up it looked ok to me, so I took these pristine slabs off wood and got to staining. So far so good, well except for the no gloves part. I forgot to grab a pair from the color department at work and at this point I was way too excited to get started to worry about stained cuticles. Sacrifice.

I even took a quick little break to take a picture with my unsoiled hand to document the process. Also, we really need to clean out/organize the garage, but that is for another day.

Things were moving along smoothly. Maybe a little too smoothly. With two coats of stain applied and an hour of recommended drying time I applied some poly with a brush. That's when things took a quick turn from "perfect and as planned" to "what the what?" With each stroke of the poly my nicely stained treads went from espresso to more of a reddish brown color. Not quite what I was going for.

I tried to salvage it by rubbing on some stain after the poly dried, but it was useless. I had to admit defeat. I grabbed my reddish brown stair tread and an espresso-y stained piece of flooring and headed back to Sherwin Williams. The guy that was working was super helpful about re-tinting my stain. He even sanded the whole thing so we could try it out a few times to make sure it was right. He also told me that I should wet the treads a little to open up the grain because oak is well known for having a tight grain that is difficult to stain. Well known to paint store guys, not so well known to me. Since it was pretty much dark by the time I got home I would have to put off sanding all my hard work off until the next day.

Thankfully, Matt's knee has been healing up quite nicely and he offered to help me do some sanding, aka the worst job in the world. What a sweetie!

So I re-stained the treads using the Sherwin Williams guy's water suggestion, and sprayed the poly on instead of brushing and that seemed to do the trick. I sprayed 3 coats of poly and gave them a light sanding with some 320 grit sandpaper in between each coat, which made them smooth as buttah. Seriously, I've always been lazy about the whole sanding between coats thing, but I am now a convert! I even bought one of those little sanding blocks that holds your sandpaper all nicely instead of just holding it around a foam sanding block.

I left the treads to cure while I was on fall break, aka tagged along with Matt on a work trip before Thanksgiving. Which, btw was awesome! I haven't had a "fall break" since high school. It didn't hurt that it was probably 10 degrees in Denver when we left that Sunday morning, and by lunch we were sitting on a sun drenched patio tasting wine in Napa. In tshirts, no less!

Anyway, once the Thanksgiving festivities wrapped up I got to work installing all my hard work. The first step to installation was attaching the risers. We applied a generous amount of construction adhesive on the back in a zig-zag pattern along the back before squishing it onto the exsisting risers. I had the stairs resting in place so that I could push the risers up to meet the bottom of each step.

Once the riser was tight against the bottom of the step I shot a nail in each corner to hold them while the adhesive dried.

Action shot! What, you don't wear those paper masks on your head when you're working? I think I must have forgot it was up there after painting the risers.

Risers, done! I decided to fill all my nail holes and seams at this point so I had less chance of getting paint on my freshly finished treads. I also covered up some scuff marks left from the stain on the treads. It's more noticeable in the third picture up.

We used pretty much the same technique to attach the stair, except we applied the adhesive to the exsisting treads instead of the new ones, make sense?

That way I didn't get my hand covered in construction adhesive while lowering the tread into place.

Look how excited I am to be finished. Or maybe look how tired I am. Either way, I was pretty stoked.

Now, let me get out of the way so you can check out the stairway glamour shots!

The match is a little closer looking in person, but even here it's not too shabby.

Now I just have to get to the top half (womp womp). Until then, it's Christmastime! I feel like I need to make some sort of ornament like I have in the last few years (here, here, here, and here) . I love all the Himmli stuff, but I don't think I have the patience for all those straws right now. Do you like to make a Xmas thing each year? That's a thing, right? If so, what are you making so maybe I can copy it!

Nikki Kelly

I'm finally starting to see the finish line in the hardwood stairs 5k fun run for the cure! I'm so excited with how this is coming together, let's just skip to this weeks last picture.

Ahh! I'm loving these steps sooo much, and they're not even stained yet! But back to how I got from freshly ordered treads to fitting them into place. I added two new tools to my home improver arsenal. First, a sliding compound miter saw. We went with this Ryobi one because it had a lot of function for the price, and it will be useful for about a million things in the future. The second tool I picked up to make this tread installation easier was the Tread Tool.

The tread tool is basically those two gray plastic pieces, it's up to you to provide the piece of wood to attach them to. I just used a scrap strip of plywood that I cut off of the stair skirts a while back. Once you have it put together, just slide the plastic pieces so they're flush with the skirt (or walls if you didn't install a skirt) and tighten the black wing nuts. Easy peasy. Oh, and those gaps toward the front are just where the skirt doesn't meet up with the old treads exactly. They will be covered up by the treads so nothing to worry about there.

Once the template is secure you need to transfer your lines to your tread. I measured an equal distance from the back of the treads on both sides so I could line up the template evenly. I think I may have just made more work for myself, you could just line up the back of the template with the back of the tread, but what's done is done!

After I had my lines marked I took my tread outside to cut with my new saw! It's so exciting, it's even got a lazer! After about a minute of making sure my cut would be exactly the right angle (because of course nothing is ever square) I cut the ends off and took them inside to make sure they fit.

Since I only ordered the lower six treads, I'll have to repeat this all over again (just like everything else). But for now they are looking beautiful! I'm also waiting on Sherwin Williams to custom match my stain so it matches the floors, but because I ordered it within the dates of the Labor Day sale, they said they would honor the discount when I pick them up. Yay for conveniently timed sales!

Oh, and I need to trim some of the depth off the back of the treads. I would really love to get these permanently installed next weekend, but we are celebrating an early Thanksgiving on Saturday and I don't know if I'll have enough time. Wish me luck!

Nikki Kelly

Oh, and a quick ACL update: Matt is doing great! He has been really great about following his doctors advice and is already walking around the house without his crutches or brace a little. Thanks for the well wishes!

Well, Matt had his surgery on Monday. As we were expecting/hoping, his ACL was replaced. Although it is a longer recovery (boo), it will leave him with the strongest knee he can have (yay). So while he is camped out on the couch recovering, I will keep plugging away on these stairs. This weekend I cut the noses off of the upper steps, say hello to Decetive Tubbs.

I mentioned that last week I though one or two of my treads might split when I payed them out, and I was right! I love it when that happens. Being right that is, not breaking stuff that I'll have to replace. Actually only one of them actually split in two, the other one was still in tact-ish, but the cracks went all the way to the back so I replaced it anyway. Here's the new ugly treads in place.

While cutting the noses off I also shortened the width of the steps a little too. Some of them stuck out over the edge of the drywall a little, and I've decided I want to put another skirt on this edge under the pretty risers. I'm not exactly sure what that process will look like, but I'll get it figured out.

This was all done on Sunday, and on Monday (surgery day) I got an email from Home Depot that the treads I ordered had arrived! When I opened them I was so pleased, but let me tell you why. See, at first we were going to order these oak treads for the low price of $32 a piece. Multiply that by 12 and stairs get expensive quick! Then one day after a little prodding from Matt, I searched the HD website to see if there was anything cheaper. Luck would have it that they have a builder grade version that comes in two different sizes! Since we have two sections I could order these 36" treads ($18) for the bottom half, and the 48" treads ($21) for the top half. That's a savings of $150!

Ok, before I get off track let me tell you the other reason we went with the builder grade versions. Reviews! Of the reviews I read, most of them mentioned ordering a few extras to account for the builder grade-yness (aka imperfections). Most of the reviewers said there were some imperfections, however most of the treads had one side that was pretty much perfect. I ended up ordering 7 with the intention of returning the least desirable one. In the picture above I have all of the ones we are keeping with their pretty sides turned out. Below I snapped a detail shot of each boards ugliness. Some were as simple as some darker grain, the second one is particularly ugly (but the other side was perfect) and there were some little holes from what I can only assume were bugs, and a scratch here in there.

All in all I am pretty happy with these treads, and saving a little mulah in the process. Oh, and speaking of saving mulah, Sherwin Williams is having a 40% off sale on paints and stains, which is where we'll get our stain color matched to our wood floors. Perfect timing, if you ask me.

Nikki Kelly

(This post was sponsored by neither Home Depot nor Sherwin Williams, but by Matt and myself)

Happ Friday friends! I hope everyone enjoyed their Halloween. If you remember, last time I left off the stairs were looking like this, which is slightly less ugly that they were before that.

I even mentioned that I had picked up my riser material and started priming! Since we are installing the new stairs and risers over the exsisting ones the risers don't need to be supporting anything. So I decided to use a sheet of 1/4 inch sanded plywood. It's fairly cheap and smooth. Just what I was looking for!

Once I was done priming them I needed to cut them down to fit. First I measured and cut the risers to fit the width of each step, and then marked the height on the back with a pencil before ripping them on my table saw.

They're not a perfect fit, but once I caulk and paint, you'll never know. Oh, and don't you think this looks so much better than the first picture? I left them sitting like this for about a week just because it improved the view from the couch so much, but they kept falling over. I was thinking of painting and installing them, but decided against it until we have the treads to put over them. I don't want to ruin the top somehow.Hopefully it won't be too long, I ordered the unfinished treads this week for the bottom half of the stairs, so they should be here sometime next week.

While I'm waiting, I started the process on the upper half. I removed the last of the old crusty carpet, padding and tack strips.

I still have to trim the noses off of them, but I'm convinced I'll have to replace a few steps. This is the worst, but a few of them have splitting across them that look like they'll break when I pry them out.

In other news, Matt has surgery scheduled on Monday to clean up his meniscus and possible replace his ACL. We won't know the extent until after his surgery, but luckily I don't have class this Monday and can take care of him. Wish him (and me) good luck!

Nikki Kelly

Now that we've had time to settle back in from our trip to The Netherlands, I was itching to get back to work on the stairs. Just so you know, vacation wasn't the only thing holding us back from making some progress on the stairs. In fact, if you're really good at remembering everything I've written (of course you are!), you might notice about a month of inactivity. Why you ask? Here's a hint.

It's an MRI scan of Matt's knee. What might not be obvious to those who don't know how to read an MRI scan is that it's pretty messed up. We were at my friend Jenna's house warming party and Matt was participating in the usual tomfoolery that is expected at a party, and the next thing he knew was he was laying on the ground with his patella (knee cap) on the side of his leg. It's pretty much a foregone conclusion that he will need surgery to repair it. So with his knee messed up we've been doing less working-on-the-house and more sitting-on-the-couch. But enough about Matt's knee.

Last week I had had enough of sitting around and started the next step of the stair makeover progress. That next step would be cutting and installing skirts for the stairs. Sadly, I didn't take many any pictures of the process, but I still have the top half of the stairs to do, at which point I'll be better about documenting the process. It was a little complicated and I didn't quite do it right the first time around. I did remember to take pictures after they were both notched out, go figure. Here is the skirt while it was still really tall.

A little too tall for my liking. To cut them down evenly, I measured up from the same step on both sides. I chose to make them 3 inches taller than the edge of the step. Once I had that marked, cutting it on my table saw was pretty easy.

After a quick trimming the painting began. I took them out to my spray booth (ok it's just a garage) and primed and painted them. I was going to hand paint them at first, but after the first stroke of the brush I opted to break out my trusty paint sprayer. It just makes it look so perfect and I love it!

The step after the skirts has been the one I've been wanting to get to since the begining because we already had all the supplies. So because of that you'll just have to wait to see the skirts til later. That next step was flooring the landing in the same hardwood that we have throughout the house. The reason I waited was because I wanted to start from the bullnose and work toward the back. And in order to put the bullnose on I had to have the skirts installed, and before that I had to have the nose cut off the steps, and before that the carpet had to go. To say I was a little excited to finally get to this point would be a slight understatement. Here I am marking how much to cut off the bottom spindle on our railing so that the bullnose piece could just slide underneath.

Once the nose piece was installed it was a quick project. I spent about an hour Sunday night installing the bullnose and some flooring, then called it quits so I could watch The Walking Dead.

I finished it up on Monday morning in probably an hour, it was really pretty quick. Also, it's kinda funny how much I enjoy this little slice of our staircase now!

Here's that spindle I undercut so the bullnose piece could slide underneath. It needs just a little paint touch up on the bottom, but I'll worry about that when we put the moulding on top of the skirts and around the landing.

And speaking of those skirts.... here one of them is. We plan on putting some baseboards right on top of them, so they're not really finished. Just enough so we could move on to the next step.

That next step would be covering these crusty risers with pretty white ones! I can't wait.

In fact, I wanted to keep the ball rolling so much so that I went ahead and bought the material for them Monday afternoon and they are already primed!

Hopefully we can cut, paint, and install them this weekend! At the very least it will improve the view from the couch. So wish us luck! Oh and if you have any encouraging stories about ACL replacement surgery send them our way!

Nikki Kelly