Refinishing Stairs?

9 years ago

Our open staircase is currently a honey oak shade, and the new flooring by it is sort of a walnut shade of vinyl planks. The rest of the woodwork in the house has been painted white, so the honey oak looks awful now.

Is there a way to stain them darker without stripping all the stairs and spindles? Any product that can be put over top of the current finish?

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Comments (4)

jeff-1010
9 years ago
the best you can hope for is to use a made for floors urethane or varnish. and there's no guaranty it will hold up as well as on raw wood. but you don't have too much to loose, as striping all that wood is not for the faint of heart.

to do it, you will need to scrub it with a degreaser , then scrub it with ammonia, after that wipe off with a wet rag. it's important to clean the surfaces THROUGHLY . scrub and wipe off with a clean cloth. next use 80-120 grit sand paper and rough sand every inch. then wipe of the dust and you're all set to go.

if you give this a shot , mail me to tank me or curse my name. good luck.
klem1
9 years ago
"Any product that can be put over top of the current finish?"
Possibly but I strongly advise hiring a professionel for assessment of what is possible.
This is a classic example of why one should consider all these issues BEFORE deciding to change things.
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Sanding, depending on how vigorous, will either scuff the sealing top-coats or remove them to bare wood. If the floor guy only sanded, there is a reason it looked dingy. Seems to me the flooring guy was responsible for properly fixing his damage; it sounds as if he did not. Can you post a picture so we can see what you have to work with? You will definitely have to re-stain and apply coats to seal/top-coat (varnish, poly, etc.). The question is whether you can just stain and then apply sealing coats to repair what you have sanded. Do you have any idea what was used to seal/ttop-coat after the flooring guy stained? Different product will age differently and have different sheens. If you cannot figure out the original products used (including the original manufactror and formula for the stain), I would sand every tread or at least the part that will be exposed (once away from the spindles, you should be able to use an electric finish sander), stain again, and put on uniform sealing top-coats of something like water-based flooring poly to all the treads. Researching the best products to refinish stairs will provide name brands for the final, protective finish coats. I do not think that something like Rejuvinate will work since you have probably taken off the stain and protective top-coats.
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First clean up the banister and spindles - make sure they don't have any wax, etc. I would remove the carpet, and fill the bad dings in the stair treads. Don't use too much filler - it will make more work to sand down. Use a plam sander with 80 grit to sand down the filler and lightly sand the bull nose of the stairs. Follow up with 120 grit sanding. Vacuum everything and use a tack cloth, then stain the stair treads. Follow this with one coat of polyurathane. This first coat of poly will prevent any paint that might bleed from sinking into the raw wood. I would then mask around the spindles and risers, and paint them two coats. Finally, lighly hand sand the treads, vac and use a tack cloth, and give them 2 more coats of poly.
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I suggest you go with a dark stair tread and white risers if you are keeping the red oak treads. I would even look at something as strong as a "black" tread. Match the risers with the "soft" white you are achieving on the floor. That's how you can get everything to tie together.
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I’m not the OP but this question relates to my current dilemma. We are replacing treads on stairs and the “discussion” is stuck on the risers. Should they be stained to match or painted white. I have seen both but it seems more recent design is going with stained risers. Since the last time we tried to redo these stairs was 13 years ago and we couldn’t agree on a lot of things and scrapped the project, I don’t want to get stuck again. The pics are of our staircase ripped out carpeting, a pic with stained risers, and a pic with painted risers. Since we are going through the work and expense, I want to make sure we aren’t putting in dated design from the get go. The other point we are discussing is wood spindles vs metal.
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User
9 years ago
Short answer is no. There are no good(lasting) products that can be applied to the existing stairs with out stripping the existing finish.

Best method is to strip the stairs, sand with 150 grit sandpaper to smooth and then apply the new stain and finish with a floor finish. Sanding/restaining the hand rail is fairly simple.

The spindles are a pain to strip, so painting them white might be the easier way. Lightly hand sand with 150 grit, primer with a primer like BIN(made by Zinnser) and paint to match the other trim.
chedanemi
Original Author
9 years ago
Thank you. The house was a foreclosure, so we changed virtually everything. I knew the stairs would be the bigest problem, but I wasn't going to leave all the rest of the trim in the house thee ugly dark original stain, so I thought worst case, I would have to strip the stairs. I do intend to paint the spindles white, so that will be one less area to strip!

Thanks again for your input and advice.

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Refinishing Stairs?

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jeff-1010

klem1

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jeff-1010

klem1

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