Planned to start this project summer of 2020 when all 4 kids would be out of the house for 2 months, but no dice, pandemic. Like the rest of the world, things changed at home in mid-March. 2 kids moved back home from college, and the 2 high-schoolers had to do school from home the rest of the semester. Full-time summer camp counseling jobs for high-schoolers were canceled, daughter graduated college May 2020, all her interviews were cancelled and she stayed home to job hunt from here. With all the kids and hubby working/schooling from home, the flooring project vanished.

Fast forward to Fall 2022, we started over, officially empty nesters now with 1 finished with college and working, 2 in college and 1 in the Navy. We started the project in November 2022.

After signing contract it was a couple weeks before they could start. In the meantime, I had an electrician come and swap out the old 90's stair lights and install smaller LED ones.

The staircase company removed carpet, railings, balustrers, and some trim. They repaired where needed. did some work to make it code-compliant (it wasn't even safe/wiggly railing on landing, hand rails too low, etc), and installed solid red oak treads, then stained to match the downstairs wood floors and painted the risers, trim and patched and touched up walls. Stair runner material was back ordered, so that had to wait til January 2023.

After the stair runner was installed, the flooring crew installed wood on the landing, in the gameroom and a study area. Then they installed new carpet in the bedrooms. Everything is finally put back in place, except I have some areas that need wall art or floating shelves; will work on that next.

Materials:

• Stair treads: Solid red oak treads, stained to match existing wood floors downstairs
• Balusters and newel posts: They are iron, black and "hand-scraped" not hammered. The finish has some variation to it so it reflects light differently throughout the day. The plain ones are tapered, they're slightly thicker in the middle. They are called "Tuscan round" but that's probably the company's own name for them.
• Carpet runner: Shaw, Chase, color - Oyster Shell
• Upstairs wood: 2-1/4" wide solid red oak flooring, stained to match.
• Carpet in bedrooms: Karastan, Grand Form, color - Moonstone

BEFORE:

Stairs

Landing:

Gameroom:

Bedrooms:

Our daughters have 2 rooms bc the previous owners busted through a wall into attic space and added an enormous 2nd room. We used to call it the "Barbie Dream Room." You have to step down to get to the bedroom level. It wasn't built right and had no HVAC in the extra space, so we fixed all that 20 years ago. This pic is a mess bc I was already moving things in there to make way for the flooring project.

We have a weird house. Upstairs there are 4 different places where you have to step up or down one step to get to the next room. When the stair company was here they also put wood treads and risers on each of these places, and then the wood floor installers handled the rest by bringing the wood flooring up to meet the caps seamlessly. Both crews were very skilled.

AFTER:

Stairs with runner

It's a split stair case with this straight run going down the other side

Landing

Bedroom

The flooring pros did a great job on the transitions. This is a pic of the landing transition to the hall bath. Totally flat.

Another good transition. They called this a "mini-baby." It's a low profile transition from the wood landing to a bedroom with carpet. And they used something call a Z-bar I think.

Stepping up to the gameroom

Now going to our daughter's rooms

We decided to continue the wood into this room and into the closet

Here's another great example of a flat transition from wood to the tile in the bathrooms. Great installers.

We no longer call it the Barbie Dream Room; now we call it the Harry Styles room. I screamed the first time I saw this.

There were a few issues that popped up, but they were handled professionally.

I now wipe my hand of renovations or remodels. No more. Our house is done. From now on everything is just maintenance or repairs. I feel like opening a bottle of champagne. Only took us 23 years.