Our old style ranch staircase isn't the most attractive thing that you see when you enter the house. It's always been on the "to do" list since we moved in. Aside from replacing the bottom step, it's just stayed on the "to do" list indefinitely. But nothing like some urgency to get things moving.
This started life as a normal staircase but sometime over its 120 year life the traditional newel and spindles were replaced for well this ...
It had a runner down the middle which got pitched on day 1 .. not like it made things look any better anyway. It also isn't to building regs and MTL would need to fix it as part of the work. Regs state a max of something like 10cm can fit between any 2 spindles (apparently the size of a baby's head). As we have no spindles at all, we could fit a baby elephant's head through comfortably.
The dilemma was what to do with the stair treads. If new spindles are to be added, it would make refinishing the stairs all that much more difficult. The initial plan was always to clad them in new oak treads and risers and not worry about what is underneath. With new spindles that would mean popping them back out and risk breaking them in the process. It would also require cutting off each stair nosing. Again not ideal.
Next door, our neighbours refinished the original treads and it looked very nice. After some thinking and YouTubing, I felt this was the best way forward. The post below gave me some inspiration - as bad as our stairs looked, it still was nicer than his.
Here is another good post for finishing stairs .. a bit more talking in this one
So after a few months of writing about other peoples' work - it was finally time to do something constructive myself.
The tools were all around the house from previous projects - aside from the carbide scraper which I picked up from B&Q ..
Key tools used:
- Paint remover - this one was a non-solvent kind from Toolstation
- Carbide scraper
- Wood chisels
- Claw hammer
- Nail remover
- Nail punch
- Good shop vacuum
- Belt Sander
- Palm Sander
- Sanding Block
- 40/80/120 grit sandpaper
- Wood glue
- Wood filler
- Respirator
- Worklights
The first step was to pop off all the ends to the treads. These had several layers of gloss glooped on them and as the grains rain in an perpendicular direction, they would have been damaged if they were left on during sanding and scraping.
The old cut-outs for the spindles were poorly filled in so this was fixed as well - just popped out with a wood chisel.
A view from top with the filler and ends removed.
Ash was keen to help and I needed some help with removing old nails, staples and carpet tacks.
Then came the removal of the old gloss paint from the stair treads. I used the remover in several goes as it made the job a lot easier and caused much less dust. Paint on, leave for 20min and amazingly the paint just starts to bubble off. A carbide scraper did the rest. Just make sure to scrape in line with the wood grain here.
After the stairs were mostly scraped clean. Out came the belt sander with 40 grit to remove the top layer of wood and smooth out the surface. This would have been impossible to do with new spindles installed.
You can see the differnnce between the part that was exposed vs the part that was just just sanded down.
A similar scaping process was done on the removed ends. This was done outside to limit the mess in the house. At some stage they will be re-united back with the treads for final staining.
And the stairs ready to for the spindles.
I'm sure the other side of the stairs will take a while to do but the intent is to do something like the video shared above .. fill and smooth everything out. Paint the risers white and stain the treads a dark brown to match the flooring. But expect this in a post sometime next year. 😟
