Joe Henderson, Could you please tell me what the "spider" at the back is and what it does. We re leveled the machine AGAIN only to have it rock and roll and become unlevel. Looking at the struts I see there is a fair amount of light colored oil on the struts and wonder if that is normal or could that be part of the problem. Are the struts like shocks on a car and wear out? Even if I remove the counter, replace the machine with a new free standing unit, it would extend an additional 5-8" into an already tight area. Thanks Inga

Sigh....carpets hide HORRIBLE surfaces. And you've just discovered another place where this is true - the stairs. *In THEORY (ahem....too much work for most professionals - they would skip over to a surface and be done with it), you can TRIM OFF the slight overlap nose on every single tread to create a perfect 90 deg angle for each riser/tread combo. Then you need to STRIP AND SAND down the white material SITTING on the wood. Please check for lead based paint if the house was built before 1978. (If there is LEAD....move on to full removal/replacement of the tread/risers and leave well enough alone.) Once the wood is PERFECTLY CLEAN (and that means free of the chemical STRIPPER you used to remove the white ?paint?), you can then go ahead and putty all the little staple holes and cracks, etc. Then you sand again. This thing should be as smooth as an Ice Rink! Now you are ready to glue down the vinyl and the nosing. Shouldn't take more than a week. Or you source IDENTICAL thickness wood (pressure treated for this purpose) and remove and replace each and every riser and tread. Be aware....as soon as you TOUCH these things, you need to bring the whole thing up to code. Move ONE piece and you need the whole thing to code. And code means "Finishing Carpenter" level of mastery....and legal everything that goes with the title. If you do this, you might as well have them deal with the banister, etc and have everything moved up to code at the same time - no sense in waiting. If you simply resurface the treads with new carpet, you get away from all of this. If you can resurface using the original material, you should be able to keep everything else as-is. As soon as you remove stuff, and "rebuild" then you are getting into so serious code issues. Personally, I would throw down a stunning carpet that compliments the LVT and leave well enough alone. Make it look handsome by using a runner and then fixing/painting out the treads/risers in a pretty way....but it will involve a huge amount of work. Good luck. Check the paint for lead before you do anything else.

I agree with Patricia and the others. 4K is very low for the amount of work and materials needed to complete the stairs correctly. If a patch is added to fill in where the runner was the 2 woods will take stain differently and never look cohesive. If a cap was added to the tread to resolve the staining issue you will have a much bigger issue with riser heights. A 1/4 inch is enough to trip you up every time on the first and last step causing a huge safety risk. IMO, I would just redoing the runner if your budget won’t allow for a complete replacement.

Duplicate post.