Hi Moms.
I think we've finally made the decision to remove the carpet from our living room and replace with hardwood. Now we're trying to decide if its worth the investment to do the same with the stairs that go from this room to the upstairs. Cost, safety and appearance are all huge considerations. We'd easily leave the carpet however we also want a great look as well. Any comments and experiences welcomed. Thanks Moms
I like the idea of both...carpet in the center of the step, with wood floor on each side of it.
I think you have a couple of options: I have a friend who had hard wood stairs, but the verticle part was not "hard wood" it was painted wood - so it was cheaper than the "hard wood" and saved some costs. You could also do hard wood with an "integrated" carpet so that it had the look of hard wood going up and down.
But, whoever pointed out that they are loud is 100% right.
Also, I had hardwood downstairs and carpet upstairs and on my stairs and the carpet on the stairs definitely got dirty - it's hard to clean on the stairs.
Another idea is to have the hardwood and then put those little carpet pieces on each step to cut down on the noise and to "save" the wood.
So many choices!
If you are thinking of changing your stairs its going to be abit more involved than just removing carpet. You will most likely have to have the risers totally redone with stain grade wood and the hand rail will most likely have to be redone as well since in most stairs the spindles are attached to each riser. So depending on how your stairs are built is going to determine the cost and time it will take to do. If you do decide to further investigate this please be very careful that you get a very qualified carpenter with references on stair work that you can check. Most people are not quailified to do stair work.
Good Luck!
M.
We also went through this dilemma. My mother decided it for me though. When I was growing up we had hardwood stairs and the wear and tear on them caused my parents to put down a Oriental runner. Without the carpet too the stairs were really noisy with kids running up and down them. My mother said that drove her nuts... Anyway, when we upgraded our floors to hardwood we talked about taking the carpet off of stairs and were unable to find carpet runners that would fit our current stairs and landing. Intead we just put down a thicker padding under new carpet. Hope this helps.
Good luck.
I kept carpet on our stairs. I think it looks great. Plus, it is just that little bit safer, and much easier to keep clean.
My sister put harwoods down on her whole bottom floor, but not the stairs and she wihed she had. The carpet just looks so worn out now and is hard to keep clean.
