Transform Your Stairs Using Paint

Do you have stairs that are covered in dirty, ugly carpet? Well, we did...and as part of our basement renovation, we were going to change that! We ripped up the old, nasty carpet then painted the steps and risers. We ended up having to also use carpet tiles on them because our dog slipped when going down the stairs and got freaked out.

Surprisingly, the process of ripping up the carpet was not as hard as I thought it would be. You just need a few tools and a lot of elbow grease.



I started at the bottom of the stairs, using a razor knife to cut the carpet loose on the bottom stair to see what I was dealing with before I ripped it all up. The bottom tread and riser seemed to be in good shape, so then I started pulling back the carpet, ripping out the staples as I went. I went one step at a time, folding the carpet back, removing the padding, tack strips, and staples. I did not want to rip all the carpet out at once, so we could still walk on them without stabbing our feet. 

The carpet ending up being in three pieces, which worked out well for me not having to cut it.  I used a pry bar to lift up the tack strips, which did a pretty good job of getting them up in one piece. I used needle nose pliers for removing the hundreds of little staples that was holding the padding down and a hammer for a few random nails. It took me a few hours spread over two afternoons, because my hands got worn out!

Once all the staples had been removed, we filled the holes with wood putty and let it dry. Once the putty had dried, we sanded the steps till they were smooth and cleaned the dust off really well. Tack cloth is a good option for removing all the small dust particles.

We used two coats of primer on the stairs since the wood was old and had never been painted. Tip: Paint every other stair and let dry so you can still go up and down the stairs while working on them. Once the primer was dry, we applied two coats of Behr Porch and Patio Floor paint (this was the same thing that we used on the tile floors.)

Our stairs had a landing at the bottom that was plywood and had obviously been added during a prior remodel (since you could see where the stairs had been cut out. We chose not to paint this, but instead use some of our leftover Luxury Vinyl Flooring from the basement reno. We cut it to size and glued it down to the plywood, instead of floating it. We then added trim to cover the gaps around the edges.

Once the stairs were completely dry, we installed the carpet tiles using double sided tape for extra stability. Since nothing in our house is standard, my hubby had to trim a little off most of the tiles to make them fit, but that is easily done with a razor knife. They are not as pretty as a decorative runner, but they are a budget friendly option, especially if you have kids and pets.

The stairs are so much easier to clean now and they tie in with the look and feel of the basement. This was the last project in our basement renovation and it feels so good to finally have it complete!

Catch up on the rest of the Basement Renovation Series here.