Stair Research

I have learned a lot about stairs today trying to determine what to do with ours. I wasn't sure how common our circumstances were since it seemed like our stairs were built sort of weird. And they may be, but our problem is one that many people have - what to do with formerly covered stairs. Most people are trying to get rid of their carpeted stairs.

I found that there are stair tread covers that you can purchase to lay overtop of your existing treads. The tread is the top part of each step - the part you walk on. Then you can also purchase a riser (the other part of the step) which is usually just a really thin piece of wood. I want white risers so I am wondering if we could just do them ourselves. The tread covers have a nose that comes down over the front to leave a little bit of a lip like you see on a lot of wood staircases. And we can buy them unfinished in a variety of wood types so we can stain them to match our wood floors. The total cost if we purchased unfinished tread covers and primed risers would be around $500 including shipping.

The main problem I am running into with these is a safety issue. When we put this cover over each stair, it is going to cause the top riser to be a different height since our upstairs obviously won't have one of these tread covers. And we can't really do anything with the upstairs floor because it is the exact same floor as the two bedrooms up there - so we can't add height to the landing/hall area. Anyway, having this height variance (which would probably be around 3/4" and should only be 3/8" max) causes balance issues when you are using the stairs. Another thing I am considering is how slippery the steps will be for Kyler walking up and down with socks or pajamas on which is making me at least consider carpet although I really want wood stairs. The other thing that I would need to figure out before we order anything is how the bottom few stairs would look because of the fact that the edge of each stair already butts up against the top of the wall so now they are going to stick out some.