DIY Staircase Makeover

all right boys and girls the funnest part of any home-improvement project is of course demo day make sure that you're safe use goggles gloves boots as you see my wife decide to be a little too cute and didn't putting shoes on for the first couple of hits against the wall that's on her but she's safe now and then make sure you kill the power you don't want have power running through that room you don't want to hit any of the cables and create a disaster there so once that's done it's helpful to pre-cut a lot of the sections you'll be breaking down that way doesn't demo way too much stuff and creating more problems laying down the road and then find the biggest hammer you got and then start whacking everything down and let your imagination roam free see that blank canvas that you're creating all right so for the framing now if I could've eyes you to focus on one specific section of this build more so than any other section I would say it's the framing it's your foundation if you screw up this part you're gonna have so many issues customizing every little piece after them and troubleshooting and fixing problems so take your time make sure your walls are nice straight they're upright and the most important part is if you have transition pieces like I do here where one side of the railing comes one way and then it pivots and turns it creates a very difficult way to connect the two together when it comes to putting trim when it comes to putting the metal railing on top so figure and plan the stuff out I kind of regret not putting a little step-down section maybe four inches deep or wide and then continuing it again it probably saved me so much hassle but that's my advice to you learn from my mistake the nice thing is we got everything figured out now for the drywall drywall typically comes at your hardware stores in a quarter inch 3/8 1/2 inch and a 5/8 make sure you take a little piece out of your wall to kind of see the thickness that you're gonna have that will make it easier to mud later down the road in my situation though is a half-inch drywall nothing fancy the best way I figured out to do drywall cut cutouts is I take a piece of paper and draw at the shape and then measure from every side to every corner and then come out in your garage and then start tracing that exact pattern out when it comes to speeding up the process of cutting use your utility blade with a straight edge kind of like a level in the situation on the white part and then flip it over and crack it it'll break exactly perfectly on that line it's really fascinating it's a lot of fun and it works a lot better than just using one of those drywall knives all right all the drywall is hung up using the screws but for the corners actually recommend using the drywall nails mostly because the head on the nail is flush and flat makes a lot easier to apply the that joining compound on top of that and it won't interfere in the way now for the actual taping of the joints on the drywall you're gonna need a few tools you're gonna need a six in joining knife a 10 inch taping knife and a 14 inch plaster trial itself if you want to get a hot can spend extra money that's a little plate that you can put the compound on it makes it a lot easier but you can get away with it doing it a different way when it comes to mixing the content itself it's the all-purpose joint compound and you want to get it to the consistency of ketchup being on a trowel essentially so add some more honor there and mix it up and you're ready to go apply a first coat into the joints themselves and then lay the tape down on top this is your drywall tape follow the drywall tape with your drywall taping knife with a skim coat of the compound applying onto it let that sucker dry overnight once this dry come out sand it a little bit and then start applying a wider section onto that taping part so sand all the edges with 150 grit sandpaper using a pole sander once that's done you're ready to apply a skim coat of the actual texture in my situation I have the knockdown you might have the orange peel two applications are very different so kind of do your research to see what's the best technique to get the texture that you have and then you're ready to paint alright here's a harsh reality for you your drywall is not straight and no part of your house is gonna have a perfectly straight drywall line and so you gotta take anticipate your stairs being the same way so every tread in a sense has to be almost like a perfect customizable cut now to make this process a little bit easier I've created a little multi measuring tool if you will and basically all I did is I did two little rip cuts on the back of the two extra a piece of laminate flooring that I had the had little locking grooves in it and so I would basically line the width of the actual stair tread that I would need and I'd clamp it together using a little clamp I'll then bring this custom measurement over to my actual stair tread which roughly around 94 inches long they're nice and long to accommodate the majority of stairs that are out there I'll make my marking and then bring it to my miter saw to create the finishing cut using a 40 tooth blade on my miter saw after the cut I would do a dry foot ensuring there's no gap larger than a sixteenth of an inch on each side that way the sixteenth of an inch can be concealed using caulk once the fit was perfect I would then lay down a zigzag pattern of liquid nail adhesive install the actual tread itself using a mallet on the corners of the nose and slowly but surely pushing it in not rushing the process or else the nose will snap off on you now for the trim work I found that the budget alternative to picking up individual pieces of pre finished trim is buying a 4x8 sheet of high-density MDF at your local hardware store there are about 30 bucks a sheet I actually end up only needing one sheet for the entire project including the staircase risers and the trim I just ripped it with my track saw you can always use a straightedge and a circular saw or your table saw I secured everything using glue and nails and then make sure to go through everything using the putty to fill all the holes in sand them nicely to have them all pre finish now when it comes to painting the second piece advice I'll give you when working with MDF is that includes taking an extra step where you have to prime it first if you do what I did and a lot of people do is they just put a lot of extra coats of the paint and primer together well the MDF ends up sucking it in the first couple of coats kind of like a sponge and you just see a transparent through so to save yourself to do minimal amount of layers put one or two layers down of primer first and then you'll only need one or two layers of the paint itself when it comes to achieving a good crisp painting line I have a professional painter giving this little tip where he said to mask it off first and put a beat-down of paintable cult spread it around with your finger and then put a fresh coat of paint down and before the cult or the paint dries take the piece of tape carefully off and then you will see that crisp line the downfall is if you let it dry too long you'll end up seeing that line more of jaggedy so that's the little tip I learned from him and hopefully it'll help you guys for the risers I use a remainder of my MDF pieces and I have custom cut all the individual risers using that custom measuring tool that I've created for the stair treads and I created each individual piece custom tailored to each step on the back of it I actually wrote the step number one through sixteen I placed a piece of tape wrapping around the bottom part of the stair tread itself making the easy for me to remove those pieces after all of them had the perfect dry fit once everything is done I brought it to the garage and I've created this pattern I don't know what to call it I don't know if it's a half way between herringbone and Chevron but it really does look cool it's not an original idea but this is how I did it I used my Craig table saw sled set the miter to 30 degrees and have created these quarter-inch deep grooves I then flip the piece over and created the same one on the other side and then one straight 90 degree align down the middle once all my cuts were made and everything was ready for painting right before I laid down the paint and primer what I did is I took a piece of sandpaper 150 grit folded it in half and went through each channel little groove one or two stroke at a time mostly because when it comes to painting I believe a lot of the little fibrous materials in the wood will start rising and it won't be as crisp and sharp so take a little time feel a little bit of sanding inside of it it's not a lot of work just you can get it knocked out in just a few minutes when it comes to actually painting this time I laid down one or two coats of primer and then I finished it off with a hyper white two coats I believe is all it took and it turned out so much faster and such a better finish than when I did the trim work on my steps once the paint was dry the installation of the staircase risers couldn't have gone smoother than it did and I think that's because we took the time to custom number all the risers on the back tailored to the exact destination on the stairs themselves so when the time has come all that to do is put a couple of beads of silicone on the back of each riser set it in place and secure it using three Brad nails once the Brad nails were done throughout the risers all that to do is go back a light coat of putty into all the holes touch it up with the exact paint that was left from the risers paint and then right after that I just finished doing all the baseboards around the staircase and I'm ready to start working on the actual railing for the railing the first parts I want to start with is actually the posts themselves and so the first step is to figure out the the angle that the post would be sitting so all I took was a tee bevel and I've attached a magnetic small little level to it once I found the actual true center of the upright of it I then found out the angle to be what it needed to be using a protractor and then I started cutting things away using a diamond blade with my chops off for the metal for the actual materials that I used it was the O six five wall thickness which is basically an eighth of an inch thick when it comes to steel the post M cells were two by two the top of the railing was a 2 by 1 and then the H individual little slats if you will they were running down horizontally we're 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch material now due to the nature of the railing where it kind of angles and pivots different directions I knew that it wasn't realistic for me to build on my garage and then try to assemble it and make it work in my house so my best execution was to install the post upright first make sure they're nice and straight and then tack welding each individual piece into its secure place it allowed for me to make sure that everything did move and everything lined up exactly where I needed to be I used a welding blanket below my surface that I was working at to make sure the little splatter and sparks didn't catch my house on fire and didn't damage all the hard work that were already put in once everything's secured me my wife took everything off brought her to my garage and then I finished everything off with good strong welding beads in the garage once all the welding and grinding was done I was ready to start degreasing I'd greased it with the acetone to make sure that none of the oils and greases interfere with the finishing color that we're gonna put on it now originally my plan was to powder coat these railings and honestly it was just way too expensive to do so so I decided to give it more of a DIY approach and being metal I decided to kind of treat it like a car and what a car would withstand his durability so I first put down an automotive self-etching primer it's a primer that would put down on the bare metal of the car before paint goes on it once the primer was on I was ready to start putting the paint and for the paint again I stuck on the automotive side and I used a rust-oleum automotive matte black finish paint they advertised this stuff for automotive spoilers and hoods and stuff like that so I knew that is willing to withstand some of the environments on the outside of the house than they are on the inside of the house [Music]