DIY Staircase Makeover With DIY LED Lighting // Renovation

[Music] all right so we got the carpet and the pad ripped up next step is to clean the pad up and then rip out a bunch of steak [Music] we've got a nice new clean slate all right i'm going to make the risers and the treads myself for the risers i'm actually going to be using half inch plywood [Music] the reason i chose to use plywood on these front risers is you can't see the edges anywhere the tread is going to come over and overlap this and you can't see it on the end they're just going to be painted white so this is the perfect material usually a pine or oak or if you're doing something like that but our treads are going to be stained and these are going to be painted to attach them to the front of the risers i cut them a little short height wise and i'm bringing them up flush with the top the tread will sit right here and overlap this and then i tack it in place [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so each stair is going to have led strip lights on the bottom of the overhang and what we need to do is i need to create a dado or slot let me use my dado stack on the table saw that's the width of the tape so the led tape is about a third of an inch so that's what i'm going to aim my dado stack for and cut a slot a dado in each stair tread i just did a test cut on this piece of poplar with my dado so here are my led strip lights and there they go that's how it's going to sit so probably with i don't know hot glue or ca glue they'll be embedded into the stair tread just like that so i'm going to go ahead and do it on the actual pieces all right for this project this guy came up the led idea so i said well you got to help me with it this is my friend john mark he's going to talk a little bit about the system for the leds that we got going on here yeah so the first thing that we did was find a really great off-the-shelf package this has all the components that you need has the power supply in it has a little dimmer to control the intensity of it and then also has the correct number of footage of led tape that we need for all the steps yeah which was 60 feet i think yeah right around that um because each step has three feet on it and we want to make sure that it was fully lit so the tape comes in rolls like this um you saw us put it on earlier and it can be cut to whatever length we want so that was really important for this project the other element is that since we had to put the controller downstairs um we used thermostat wire so this is a two conductor thermostat wire 18 gauge and that's what's recommended for this load of leds yeah low voltage yeah it's all low voltage stuff on 12 volt you can't really hurt yourself too much with it but we want to make sure everything was you know secure and safe so if anybody else was digging around they wouldn't get hurt in that so the one problem that we ran into though was the original design we had set up to have a light photo sensor in the air deck of the floor this little light sensor we installed inside the air ducts but unfortunately there wasn't enough light down there to trip this when it was daytime and so that just didn't work at all so we ended up rewiring went with a different approach andy found this really great product it's from ge and it is a remote switch light sensor and so all wireless no wires it's battery operated so what i did is i put it in the window facing the uh east so where the sun rises so it'll get the most light the quickest in the morning and i think that's important because if i put it on the other side of the house the lights would be on until 11 o'clock in the morning all off the shelf parts so it's real easy to do um if you have to do some electrical work consult with some people on that we're not electricians um in our state we're allowed to do this work on our own houses so um we've done stuff in the past yeah yeah we did talk to some electricians on how to do everything yes but this off the shelf stuff though is really great because it's all plug and play yep so it's great that we have products out there like this they will be down in the description you can find access to them uh everything i bought was off amazon so yeah be sure to check those out if you're interested [Music] all right we got everything cut down to the final dimensions got the dado in the back i've got the dado right here where the wires are going to come up through the last couple things to do to get these ready put a round over on the edge on both sides top and bottom and then do a final sanding with the orbital sander spray poly and these things will be good to go [Music] oh whoa [Applause] [Music] [Music] hey [Music] man don't those leds look so good that's awesome a big shout out to john mark for helping me design and sp really spearhead the installation of these leds it really changed the entire end product we came to the conclusion that we did not need to stain them so these stair treads are solid ash hardwood and with poly on them you can see how good they look one thing that i would do differently is i've had a little bit of an issue matching up the seams i would put the treads in first and then put the risers and what that would do is there would still be a seam there but it would be a lot less visible so what i did is i got it as close as i possibly could then i went back with some caulking that matches the paint and it turned out really good so i think that wraps up this project thank you so much to you for watching be sure to hit that like and subscribe button and if this inspired you to do anything or project on your own or you do something differently let me know down in the comments i'd love to hear from you i'll see you next time on building something in my shop

Channel: Andy Bird Builds

Views: 4,857,552

Rating: 4.8842173 out of 5

Keywords: staircase, staircase makeover, staircase renovation, staircase remodel, staircase makeover ideas, diy staircase makeover, stair risers, diy staircase renovation, staircase thread, stair makeover, stair risers diy, how to, do it yourself, how to install stair thread, how to make stairs, home improvement, hardwood stairs, staircase design, stair leds, led lighting, automatic leds, stair lighting, staircase designs, staircase railing design, modern staircase

Id: lHbcV54W8rU

Length: 10min 37sec (637 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/AndyBirdBuilds]

The connector is on the end of the strip

[u/muthukumarank]

Awesome. How long it took to do this. This project will justify buying more tools lol.

[u/dudenell]

Looks good, however I'm a bit concerned if the LEDs fail the amount of work you'd have to do to fix or replace them.

[u/scubadivingpoop]

Holy shit that looks great.

[u/Udder_Nonsense]

I love the thought of it, but it's too bad that you can see the exposed LED of the higher up stairs.

[u/The_Wizeguy]

Sweet video! Looks awesome man.

[u/wgc123]

Looks fantastic - one of the few videos I liked sitting through rather than read the text.

However:

• are you at all concerned with the bottom step bein 3/4 inch taller? Does it make a difference?

• does the dado cut on the nose introduce a weak point that wouldn’t last? I have basement stairs where the noses are breaking away: granted many decades old and no one cares about an unfinished basement being unfinished

[u/too_small_to_reach]

Enjoy falling the first time you try to run down the stairs with socks on. But the lights are cool!

[u/drunkfoowl]

How hard was the carpet job? I have a set of stairs I would love to turn to hardwood.