Hi gang, hoping to get some advice on a plan of attack for beautifying the staircase in my home.
We have some stairs in my home. When we moved in, they were open backed and had some ugly carpet on them.
This led to a lot of dust falling directly below the stairs, and sometimes stuff would get dropped and fall below.
About 12 months ago, I ripped up the carpeting and added some temporary risers to the stairs, extending the back of each step with a pine dar and then screwing a piece of plywood into the dar and the underside of each step.
Added kickers to all of the steps except for the bottom one, has made a huge difference to stop dust and debris falling behind them.
Not overly pretty, but does the job. Just don’t look at the underside…
The next step is to make them not look hideous, and maybe add some nosing to the front.
I can't decide on a methodology to do this, and was hoping to get some advice.
I found overlays & riser kits online for like $110 per riser and tread.
Which do look nice, but seem expensive (I could just be completely out of touch for how much these would cost).
I also saw a few how-to DIY vids on making your own tread overlays, risers, and nosing. More steps, but cheaper and customisable.
While I like the idea of doing the overlay, I'm worried about the difference in height for each step. Currently, the travel for each step is pretty much consistent across the staircase. If I add an overlay, the travel from the floor in our downstairs to the first step is suddenly much longer, and the travel at the top step to the second story is now much shorter. "Only" by 17mm, but I think that's larger than allowable by building codes.
The other idea I had was using vinyl flooring, and getting vinyl stair nosing to match. I feel like this would require the least mucking about, and probably be thinner, removing the issue of the travel with full stair overlays. I am concerned though that this might less robust compared to other solutions.
Happy to take any and all advice.
