Hello friends! If you have followed my blog for a while, you may know that this is the first house we have lived in that has a ton of carpet in it. And that's been TOUGH to get used to. We have completely gotten rid of the carpet downstairs, after replacing it with gorgeous laminate flooring in our family room and in our girls' playroom. And now we are going to continue the trend of removing the carpet, LITERALLY up the stairs.
Here is what our staircase currently looks like. It's pretty DRAB and BORING. Worse, there aren't pretty hardwoods underneath the carpet, I am afraid. Our staircase was not built for beauty. It was built to be covered by carpet its entire life. Little did it know that the Agrusos would be moving in eventually :)
All that is about to change, my friends!!!! Now, let's take a look at some staircases that have inspired the look we are going for, shall we?



You know how opposed we are to hiring people to do our renovations for us, right? Well, that sent me on a frantic hunt to figure out a way to do this project ourselves while achieving PROFESSIONAL looking results. In the end, I found one company and one process that will give us the professional results we are looking for, but will also allow us to complete the installation ourselves.
Drumroll please…. Meet NuStair®! NuStair is the original stair overlay system where you don’t have to remove the frame nosing. NuStair originated the retread stairs process. Remodeling stairs with NuStair is a straight forward and simple process that can usually be completed in about one day {can I get an AMEN?!}. It eliminates the necessity to remove the nosing from your original staircase, which saves tons of time and mess.
After stumbling across NuStair's system and website, I took the time to watch this video {detailed installation instructions start at the 6:22 mark}. I was totally sold. This is exactly what we had been looking for.
NuStair originated this stair remodeling method after five years of research and development and owns two patents. I noticed that there are some similar systems out there on the market, but after personally discussing NuStair with the owner and inventor, Steve Mott {talk about great customer service}, I learned that those other systems are inferior attempts to accomplish what the NuStair system nails. Thanks, but no thanks… I would rather go with the patented original!
We are SUPER excited to get started, although I do dread having to remove the zillion carpet staples. Fortunately, my mom and step-dad are in town as I type this to help us with our girls while we knock this project out. I cannot WAIT to share out experience, and of course, dramatic reveal with you all :)
Who is excited? Has anyone else been reluctant to DIY their staircase renovation? Are you considering it now?
Disclaimer: I was not financially compensated for this post. I received free product from NuStair to complete my project. The opinions are completely my own based on my experience.
Room Reveals
What kind of nail did you use (size and guage) in your nail gun to fasten the tread and risers? Looks great!
I am really not sure. We used a brad nailer but I don’t remember the gauge of nail.
what is the recipe? I’m not seeing the combination of ingredients?
this was for the orange creamsicle popsicles
Love the stairs! We also purchased the Select Surfaces flooring at Sam’s club, and contacted the manufacturer in Canada to purchase the stair tread “nosing” that butts right up to the plank on each stair with Glue and brad nails. It looks amazing, but was quite costly to purchase and have shipped. I wish I had seen this post before!
Great Blog. Thanks for all of the great ideas and tutorials!
Lisa
Hi again, Lisa! I don’t care for the stair nosing–I don’t like the “lip” that it creates on the edge of the stairs, but you are right that it is far less expensive than installing wood treads like we did!
The stairs are beautiful!! Great job!!
I wish I had known about this 18 months ago!!! I ripped up all of the icky carpet from my stairs. I was going to sand the existing stairs and fill in the holes, but they were in horrible shape. My hubby and I ended up making “caps” for the stairs out of oak plywood, then I painted them dark brown. I put white wainscoat on the risers. They look okay, but I really wanted stained wood and it just didn’t look right when I tried staining a test piece. In the end, it took us quite a long time to get everything finished. I can’t wait to see your post on your finished stairs.
The staircase reveal will be up this week, Kim! Probably Wednesday–I hope you will come check it out!
I am really looking forward to this. Our stairs are carpeted and old. I dreaded hiring it out.
Thanks, Gail! We are nearly done and the stairs look AH-MAZING! It was much easier than I expected.
I so want to do this to our front stairs! Can’t wait to see the awesome transformation!
I am amazed by how well they are turning out, Ashley, and it’s much easier than I even thought it would be!
This sounds absolutely brilliant! Looking forward to seeing how this turns out!
You are going to LOVE it, Kristi! I am so excited by this project. We are ALMOST done!