Stair Re-Do

16 years ago

My husband and I are looking to re-do our staircase. The steps have carpeting which we are keeping but we want to replace the white spindles to iron. We'd also like to replace all the wood work (posts and handrails) to something with a darker stain like mahogony or cherry. I don't think it's worth refinishing the existing wood if we do the project ourselves. Stripping and sanding those huge pieces would be a nightmare and then we'd still have to re-stain.

Here are some photos of my staircase and a few pictures from the web that have the look my husband and I want in our home.

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The look we want:

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Has anyone done this in their own home? Is it worth trying to DIY? I think we can do it but I don't want to spend a month (or longer!) tackling this project. Should we hire someone? And if so, what type of contractor do I look for? I have been keeping my eyes peeled for months and I have not seen anyone who advertises for work like this.

Also any suggestions for a nice pattern with the iron spindles? I like the birdcages but I think we'd have to space them out further apart since our foyer/staircase isn't that grand - I don't want it to be too busy in a small space.

Thanks for looking!

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Comments (4)

kismet08
16 years ago
Well, the first thing I notice that is different from the inspiration staircase is that the inspiration is an open stair, while yours has a knee wall. I'm not sure that you're going to get the exact same feeling, even replacing the spindles and darkening the handrails and newels. That said, I understand wanting that darker handrail, as I have the same light oak in my house.

This looks like a huge job, as you have a lot of stairway. I would try and refinish the handrail and newels before gutting the whole thing. It will be a lot of work, but so will replacement, and replacing will also have a lot of cost. A blog I follow had a stairway similar to yours, and she redid hers with a combo of gel stain and paint. Check the link below for her "how-to", and see if you'd be happy doing something similar.

Here is a link that might be useful: Centsational Girl stairway makeover
nanny2a
16 years ago
It's not that difficult to do. Once you remove the spindles, you could gel stain the handrail and newell post similar to how they did it in the link shown by kismet. Then put in all the replacement iron spindles. We did this with ours, but we only had 10 spindles to replace, not the 60+ that you have! At at least $5 each, that's the major expense. We bought our iron spindles at Lowes, and we didn't use any of the ones with the birdcages, we just used the simple twist style.

And our handrail, bottom step and newell post are not oak, but stained a darker finish, so we didn't need to do anything more to that wood.
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nik211
Original Author
16 years ago
Kismet that was a great link - I saved it!

When my husband and I were thinking about doing the stairs we orignally were going to just re-stain the wood (like in the blog link) but with all the work involved we figured it might be worth it to just change out the spindles as well since we love the iron look (and i think it would match better with my style of decorating)...

Nanny we saw the spindles at Lowes and last time I did the math it was around $500 in supplies - which if we DIY we thought wasn't too bad...I'm afraid a contractor will charge triple...

Nanny do you mind showing me a picture of what you did. How was it getting the spindles into place on the handrail? Did you have to buy the angled pieces for the bottoms? Or did the spindles go directly onto your stairs?

I think we are both more afraid of the staining - we tried staining one of our bathroom cabinets and it was a horror! We ended up just painting it! The posts and handrails seem much more intricate to sand and stain than the cabinet we managed to screw up!

Thank you both for your responses!
sis3
16 years ago
I have had much greater success with Minwax Polyshades than with gel stain. The preparation is minimal too, just very light sanding to get rid of most of the original sheen!

These photos show some counter stools in a golden color that I changed to 'Bombay Mahogany'. Apologies to those who have seen these photos many times before!