decorating question- replacing carpet on stairs?

[clarabelle]

We have a carpeted basement and carpeted stairs that go down to it. The stairs are carpeted though the middle with hardwood showing on each side.

We would like to replace the carpet with some kind of tile or hard surface.
What do we do with the stairs? Can you tile stairs? Does it look right?
Any other ideas? or experiences?
Thanks!!

 

[mickeyfan1]

If the stairs are all hardwood, why would you want to cover them with tile? But yes, you can put any type of floor covering on them, ceramic, vinyl tiles, etc. You can get special stair nosing that will cover the front edges of the treads or leave them plain. If you were me, you would pull up the carpet and put down hardwood (glued to the concrete), or laminate or engineered wood. Hard surface in a basement is going to be colder than carpet, if you go with ceramic or porcelain tiles, it will be pretty cold, especially in the winter. If you do go with wood or laminate, you can get the stairs redone to match.

 

[clarabelle]

No real worries about cold -it isn't that cold here in the winter.

Do you think I can assume that the floors are hardwood all the way across?
Forgive me if that is a stupid question. Maybe I should pull up a little and look under it.

Are hardwood stairs really loud?

 

[NotUrsula]

Hardwood isn't going to be as loud as tile. If you find it loud, you can staple some batting to the underside of the staircase to muffle it.

The one thing you should be aware of in terms of tile is that it is much more dangerous on stairs because it is VERY slippery when wet. I personally would never have tiled stairs in a home that contained children or elderly folks.

 

[clarabelle]

I am not sold on the tile -I just don't want carpet and did not want the expense of hardwoods in the basement.
Any ideas are welcome -thanks!

 

[sbell111]

Do you think I can assume that the floors are hardwood all the way across?
Forgive me if that is a stupid question. Maybe I should pull up a little and look under it.

You should be able to tell at the edge of the carpet.

As I understand it, there are two ways that stairs such as yours are made. Some are simply hardwood stairs that have carpeting installed down the center. Others are just hardwood edges that fit to the sides of the carpeted cheaper stair pieces. These are easily identified because the hardwood part is slightly higher than the carpeted part. This is a rarely-used type I think but you should be able to tell the difference if you look at it closely.

BTW, we just redid our old carpeted stairs in a really nice berber. It looks great and feels great.

 

[clarabelle]

thanks guys!

 

[Liberty Belle]

If the stairs are hardwood, I'd definitely leave them. We also have carpeted stairs down to our basement and recently had to have the whole house re-carpeted. We were hoping the stairs were hardwood, but they weren't. So, we just went forward with the carpet. I don't like it, though. It's hard to vaccum and it gets dirty easily. Someday I want to replace the stairs with hardwood.

 

[Rose&Mike]

We have hardwood in 75% of our house. When it came time to fix up the basement I bought inexpensive wood treads from Lowe's and painted them with latex paint and then put multiple coats of low gloss polyurethane on them. I painted the risers as well. They have held up great. (And we've gotten tons of complements!) When it came time to replace the carpet on the stairs to our second floor, I painted them gold, and polyurethaned them. For the risers I bought very thin plywood and covered them in fabric to match our family room and used upholstery (sp?) nails. We don't wear shoes on the second story stairs because I only put three coats of polyurethane, but we do wear shoes on the basement stairs. You want to check the polyurethane with your paint to make sure it doesn't yellow. I use polyurethane that I got at Benjamin Moore. We went with paint, because when you looked down the stairs you weren't just seeing brown wood. Make sure you don't use high gloss urethane, because it can be very slick.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

 

[clarabelle]

thanks everyone!!

 

[Green Tea]

I think ceramic tile would be a bad idea on steps. The least bit of water spilled and you have an ice rink to walk down. It gets very slippery. Stairs would be very difficult to tile also because the the rise and run are short, you have the curve of the bullnose. Plus tile has depth so you would have to graduate the ends to the same level as the exisiting wood to avoid a rough edge. The edge tiles add up. Hardwood would be great.