Farmhouse Staircase Restoration

Carpet had come off this staircase twenty years earlier and nothing had been done since. The treads carried peeling orange varnish, hundreds of staple holes, and worn edges where the nosings had been rounded off by traffic.

Every bit of the sanding here was hand work. There is no machine that refinishes a staircase — treads worked by hand into the corners, nosings shaped carefully so the original profile survived rather than getting sanded into a soft bullnose, and detail sanding around every baluster.

Three treads were loose and one squeaked badly. We tightened all of that first, because finishing over movement just means doing it again.

Getting the color right took two rounds of sampling. Stairs almost always need a slightly different stain than the floor they meet, because the treads are quartersawn and take color differently than the flat-sawn field. The risers were prepped and painted, which gave the entry the crispness the owners were after.

We finished alternating treads so the family kept access to the second floor the entire time. Six days, no one displaced.