What should I do with my stairs?

[Deleted]

We pulled up our carpet and put in hardwoods but didnt address the stairs. It is almost a year later and we still have done nothing but paint the risers white and put brown paint on the tops. The only reason I used brown was because I had extra.
My husband is after me to do something because they look bad from normal wear and tear.
The way I see it I have two options - buy those stair caps and install them or keep painting every few years.
I am leaning more towards painting because my tastes change frequently and I am worried I might not like the caps in a few years and it would be costly to change.
So I am thinking leave the white parts white, paint the tops black and change the stained handrails to black (we also need to fix a few spokes on the handrails because they are broken).
What would you do or do you have any other suggestions?

I am not smart enough to figure out how to turn these darn pictures the other way.

[Susie]

I'd prefer stained wood to painted, and I think it might hold up better too.

[Deleted]

I am giving up on these pictures!!!

[amblor]

Are you using outdoor or floor paint? That may hold up better.

We're just painting ours (currently) also because honestly they're old stairs and I don't want to put the money into our house there. I'd rather get new kitchen floors and countertops. We've already replaced all of the carpet with hardwood downstairs and "hand scraped" teak laminate upstairs.

[Deleted]

I used regular old plain indoor wall paint last time then put some seal coat on top of it. The whole project cost me maybe $25.

I was googling around last night and found these stairs.



I'm thinking maybe all white everything then do a grey and black runner.

If I did sand down our railings and painted them, would I be able to use the same floor paint? I've never done railings before.
They are also super dirty there the railings enter the wood ramp (probably wrong terminology but i don't know what else to call it).
It is really hard to get in there to clean. I'd love to take the railing off, take the balusters out and clean the the crap out of them. Is that even possible?

[lys]

I would replace the treads with new wood and stain to match the flooring -then poly --- will last a LONG time.
The all white with a pretty runnwer would be less labor intensive.

[FoxInFiji]

Dec 27, 2012 9:41:42 GMT -5 @heyyall said:

They are also super dirty there the railings enter the wood ramp (probably wrong terminology but i don't know what else to call it).
It is really hard to get in there to clean. I'd love to take the railing off, take the balusters out and clean the the crap out of them. Is that even possible?

No not possible unless you want to completely replace the railing and hand rail.

Painting them all white is going to look dirty a heck of a lot quicker than a dark stain tread. I vote stain the treads and hand rail dark and poly. Keep everything else white.