DIY Stair Remodel on a Budget (Step-by-Step)

what's going on guys so on today's video we're gonna take this old nasty staircase that was in my home when I first bought it and we're gonna step things up a bit turning it into this [Music] and although they said it could not be done we were able to do it for under 200 in materials stay tuned so the first step in remodeling the staircase is to remove the existing Staples nails and screws that were used to hold the original carpet to the staircase because my stairs were previously covered in carpet there were a ton of nails screws and Staples that were used to hold that carpet down if anybody knows why you need to screw to hold down carpet let me know in the comments I spent most of my time removing the carpet Staples using a screwdriver and then a pair of pliers to pull the Staples out that were a little more stubborn and the biggest pain in the butt was all of this carpet and the Staples used to hold it in place I was under the nosing so that was pretty uncomfortable to pull out but you just got to do it so remove all the Staples screws whatever you have for your specific existing staircase and after removing all the Staples I removed the handrail because I'm going to take that outside sand it down and paint it before reinstalling it later lastly I vacuumed up any dirt and debris in preparation for the next step now because we're gonna be talking about stairs throughout this entire video let's spend a few seconds to talk about the anatomy of a staircase so as you can see from this picture the horizontal piece you step onto the stair is called the tread the nosing is what overhangs the vertical piece which is called the Riser and then you have stringers on both sides of the staircase now although you could do this later I decided to paint the Stringer beforehand and to do this I started by caulking between the Stringer and the drywall I used a paint sprayer to paint the stringers but a paintbrush will work just fine after prepping the stringers the next step is to cut our actual stair treads and to do that we're going to cut strips out of a four by eight sheet of plywood start off by measuring the length and the width of the stair and do this at a few locations for each stair since there could be some variability for my stair treads I really wanted to use a 4x8 sheet of Oak plywood but unfortunately when I got to my local Home Depot all they had was this quarter inch sanded Pine plywood which is not ideal but I decided to roll the dice and just hope for the best now in order to cut the plywood to fit the existing Treads I simply transposed the measurements that I made on the existing tread and then I used a straight edge to mark that all the way across next up I clamped down the straight edge to offset the distance between my circular saw and the circular saw guide so that when I ran the circular saw along the straight edge it would cut directly on my line This is something you can use if you don't have access to a table saw but this will ensure that you get a perfectly straight cut [Music] I highly recommend that you measure each stair tread individually because for my staircase in particular I saw a lot of variants from one stair tread to the other so continue to make your measurements transpose those measurements onto the plywood and use a circular saw or a table saw to cut all of your Treads to size I free handed some of my cuts but I mostly use a straight edge as a guide for the rest if you have any Jagged edges clean those up with some sandpaper after cutting your new stair treads to size it's time to install them after cutting the plywood Treads to size you want to dry fit them on top of the existing tread to make sure it's a good fit if everything looks good apply some liquid nails to the top of the existing tread and the bottom of the new tread and then place the new stair tread in place apply a bit of elbow grease to make sure that the new tread is embedded in the construction adhesive and then use a handful of brad nails to secure it permanently make sure that the new tread is flush with the existing Riser with some sandpaper and here I am moving on to the next Air tread applying construction adhesive to both the existing tread and the bottom of the new tread and then placing it on top firmly embedding it into the construction adhesive and then again using a bunch of brad nails to secure it in place so I actually borrowed this electric framing nailer for my brother-in-law which reminds me I should probably get that back but I also have a Pneumatic nail gun and I'll link all the tools that I use in the description down below also feel free to use some weights to help push the new treads down into the construction adhesive next up we need to cut the bull nose or the nosing which is going to go on the front of the stair that gives it that rounded look let me show you what I mean and just like the stair treads I really wanted to use an Oak hardwood strip for the nosing but they only had Pine common wood so again I decided to try to make some some lemonade out of these these pine lemons so I'm using my router here and a three-quarter inch round over bit I'll link all those in the descriptions to give myself a nice rounded bull nose on both sides of the pine piece of two by one this was pretty iterative but it was pretty fun after putting on my respirator it's a nice satisfying rounded look once you get it right and clean up any Jagged edges with some sandpaper next up measure the length of the stair near the nosing and cut your nosing and or bull nose to size I used a miter saw but you could use a circular saw just as easy after cutting the bull nose to length you're going to go ahead and position it in place on the front of the stair and you want to make sure that you use a good amount of wood glue before actually pushing it into place Additionally you want to make sure that the nosing is at least flush with the tread or maybe a little bit higher than the tread and you can sand it down later then use brad nails to secure it in place after installing the tread and the nosing for the first couple stairs I repeated the process going one by one down the rest of the staircase after getting the treads on continue to apply glue to the back end of the nosing and then push it up against the stair tread so that it protrudes a little bit higher than the stair tread we're going to sand that down later so it's flush if you plan to stain your stairs you really want to make sure that you remove any wood glue that might get on the steer Treads or the nosing because if you don't you're going to have the issue I had in just a few minutes also when you're attaching the bull nose you want to make sure that the nosing is a little bit above the stair tread that way if it's a little bit above you can sand it down you don't want it to be below because then you have to sand down the plywood which is already really thin after installing all the stair treads and the nosings it's time to prepare to stain the Treads and if you're going to be standing your stairs I recommend that you start with a wood conditioner so you get a more uniform stain I use the wood stain manufacturer by varithane and just applied it using a cloth to the surface of all the Treads and the nosing so I spent a lot of time going back and forth picking the right stain for my stairs and I still messed it up but what are you gonna do so do you remember when I said to make sure that you get the wood glue off if you plan on staining your steps well here's why as you can see it is extremely blotchy where I attach the nosing to the stairs because I clearly didn't get all the glue off even though I thought I did a kind of good job so I had to get a little creative and I purchased some gel stain and gel stain is a little bit better than the oil base because it kind of sits on top of the stair and you can kind of get away with a bad glue wipe off job so I bought this stain I applied it over the existing stain and although I didn't love the color at least I got a uniform look hopefully you can learn from this mistake so after applying your stain I highly recommend that you apply a polyurethane top coat and polyurethane is basically a you know like a polymer plastic coating that gives you a layer of protection over your stair treads and because we had to use pine plywood for this since they were out of hardwood it's a much softer wood that will Dent like crazy so I did like three or four coats of this polyurethane to give it the most durability possible I apply the polyurethane top coat using a paintbrush and it starts off kind of white but dries clear so for my search case I chose to reuse and just paint my existing risers except for the bottom step where there was no Riser at all so the first thing I did is I took a two by six piece of lumber I put it in with some screws and then I had some leftover hardboard for my cabinets which I basically just cut as a riser and stuck it in place but if you want to replace all your risers you can buy something called hardboard from your local Big Box store and that's going to work just fine so here I am cutting out the leftover hardboard from my cabinets to use as a riser on the bottom step and I'm cleaning up any Jagged edges with some sandpaper next apply the new hardboard riser to the step and use construction adhesive and Brad nails to secure it in place next up you're going to want to caulk where the risers intersect with the Treads and also the intersections of the Treads and the stringers and to do this I just masked everything off with tape and then applied an even bead of caulk you're also then going to want to go back and paint everything to your desired color I went with an Ultra Pure white semi-gloss for the stringers and also for the risers I said that weird and at this point all that's left are a few finishing touches like installing lvp flooring which will be another video installing some trim at the new Riser and the new lvp flooring that we installed and then removing the painters tape to reveal the final result here's a quick reminder of where we started and here's a look at the final result [Music] so overall I'm kind of happy with how things turned out but I would definitely use a hardwood plywood in the future and it honestly might be worth just buying the pre-made shreds although the method I used was pretty cheap it was with pine which I'm concerned won't last that long even though the after photos you were looking at were after a year it just took me a long time to get to editing this video but with that said please drop a like down below if you like this video And subscribe to the channel if you like DIY content like this thanks and I will see you on the next one foreign

Channel: Andrew Thron Improvements

Views: 60,341

Keywords: DIY Stair Remodel on a Budget, DIY Stair remodel, DIY, stairs, basement stairs, stair makeover DIY, stair makeover ideas, stair remodel, stair transformations, stair makeover cost, diy stair makeover, before and after, home improvement, carpet stair makeover, finish stairs, how to finish basement stairs, staircase remodel, stair diy, diy stairs, staircase renovation, easy stair remodel, cheap stair remodel, how to remove carpet from stairs, stairway makeover, stair makeover

Id: BLYTBrKnnmk

Length: 9min 25sec (565 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 11 2022