Installing a Stair Runner
By HomeAdditionPlus.com
A wooden stair case is a beautiful feature to your home. However, they can be slippery and dangerous to the homeowner particularly if you are just wearing socks. Hi! My name is Mark Donavan from HomeAdditionPlus.com and today I am going to show you how to install a stair runner on a wooden stair case.
So, what we have here is some inexpensive stair runner carpet that we picked up at a local home improvement store. What we want to first do is lay it out and using a square, get a straight edge and draw a line were we can trim the edge of the carpet to make sure we have a straight edge across the whole length of the stairwell.
So when you are drawing the line, I use a piece of wooden material with a straight edge. I am kneeling on it and using carpenter’s knife, I simply make a nice firm cut down the length of the stair runner carpet. And now we have a very clean edge that we will then want to tap into the top of the first stair tread.
The stair runner that we are installing is 26 inches in diameter and the stair tread itself is 34 and a quarter. So find the center point of the stair tread and line it up with the center point of the stair runner carpet and determined that I needed about a four and a inch offset from the edge of the stair tread and so I have drawn a line down every stair tread as a reference guide for installing the stair runner carpet.
Alright! Now the first we want to do is actually nail or staple the stair runner carpet to the outer side of the first riser. So using a staple gun, we just simply nail across the top of the stair runner to secure to the stair riser. Now that we have tapped the carpet to the top of the first stair riser with point to now securing the stair rods on each tread. We are just going to loosely screw them in to the tread so that we can have the carpet slide underneath each stair rod all the way down. Once it is the same, we will adjust the carpet appropriately then tighten up the stair rise screws.
To attach a stair rod to the tread, you want to position it evenly between the width of the tread and then using a small drill bit, create a pilot hole for the screw for the stair rod. We are putting the pilot hole into a 45 degree angle. We do it to both sides and then we will screw the stair rod into the tread. So once we drilled the pilot hole for the stair rod, you want to just slightly screw it in to place and so it temporarily held in. And we will do that all the way down the length of the stairs which I have already done with the other ones where they are just loosely connected in and now we can adjust the carpeting and then tack in the carpeting underneath the nose of each tread and at the seam of each tread and stair rise.
Okay. With all the other stair rods in place, I removed the one near that I want to work. What I want to do is make sure that the carpet comes over the stair tread and is wrapped tightly underneath the stair tread itself. And then using a staple gun, just secure every three or four inches underneath the stair tread. Likewise, I want to put a few staples every three or four inches where the stair tread meets the riser. Once that is done, I could then tightly secure the stair rod to the tread and then this one is done and we will just work our way down the length of the stairwell doing this for every single tread.
So, with the stair runner stapled in and every stair rod now tightly fastened to the tread, all that is left to do is at the very last riser is to trim the excess material away from the stair riser. So using a carpenter’s knife and square we just hold it very tight and we will make a nice cut on the base of the bottom riser.
Now, the excess material cut, all we need to do is staple the bottom piece of stair runner to the final or base runner. We do that every three or four inches and then we are done. So there you have it. For about $50.00 of material, we are able to install this stair runner using some basic carpenter tools, square, carpenter’s knife and it just a couple of stapling guns and it only took u
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