Stair Sanding: Restoring Wooden Stairs Step by Step

Wooden stairs take a serious beating. They get more concentrated foot traffic than almost any other surface in a house, and the front edge of each tread (the nosing) wears faster than the rest of the floor. Add to that decades of carpet, gripper rods, glue, paint splatters from various redecorations, and a few generations of varnish, and most timber staircases are in fairly rough shape by the time anyone thinks about restoring them.

The good news is that most of them are worth the effort. The slightly less good news is that stair sanding is fiddly, slow work, and it costs more per square metre than a normal floor. Here is what is involved and what to expect.

What is actually under your carpet

Before getting too excited about restoring a wooden staircase, it is worth pulling back a corner of the carpet to see what is there. Common situations:

• Full hardwood treads and risers. The best case. Solid oak, pine, or beech treads with matching risers. These can usually be restored beautifully.
• Hardwood treads with painted risers. Very common in older Dublin houses. The treads were the wear surface and got the timber, while the risers were painted because they were never meant to be seen. Often still a great candidate, and you can keep the painted risers as a contrast.
• Softwood pine throughout. Standard in a lot of mid-20th-century homes. Pine sands well and takes finish nicely, though it dents more easily than hardwood.
• Plywood or chipboard treads. Sometimes the treads are not solid timber at all, especially in newer homes where the stairs were always intended to be carpeted. These cannot be sanded and finished as exposed timber.

It is worth checking one or two steps before committing. A small section of carpet lifted at a stair edge usually tells you what you need to know.

Why stair sanding is more expensive than floor sanding

If a normal floor costs say €30 per square metre to sand and finish, you might expect stairs to come in around the same. They do not. Stairs are commonly priced per step, not by area, and the per-step rate often works out to two or three times the per-square-metre rate of a floor.

There are good reasons for this:

• You cannot use a drum sander. The big machine that does most of the work on a normal floor is useless on stairs. Each tread and riser has to be sanded with a hand-held edge sander, an orbital, and often a scraper for corners and detail.
• Lots of edges. Every step has two corners where the tread meets the riser, plus the nosing on the front, plus the join against the stringers on each side. That is a lot of edge work per square metre of actual surface.
• Spindles and balustrades. If your staircase has timber spindles and a handrail you want sanded too, that is hand work with detail sanders and scrapers. Slow and finicky.
• Old fixings. Stair carpets are typically held with gripper rods nailed to the treads, plus tacks along the risers. All of that has to come up, and every nail or staple has to be punched down or pulled.
• Awkward access. You are working at an angle, often crouched over, with limited room to swing tools. Even the dust extraction setup is harder.

Roughly what stair sanding costs

Our guide rate for stair sanding and sealing is €40 to €50 per step, which puts a standard 13-step staircase somewhere in the €520 to €650 range for the main work. Spindles, stained handrails, fully open-sided staircases, or board replacement are extras on top of that.

The exact figure can move up or down based on the condition of the timber, the finish you choose, and whether the risers are being kept as exposed timber or repainted. These are guide prices only. The accurate price for your stairs needs us to look at them on site, which is free and comes with no obligation.

The process step by step

1. Lift the carpet, underlay, gripper rods, and all staples or tacks. Punch down any protruding nails.
2. Identify any treads or risers that need replacement or repair before sanding starts.
3. Coarse sand each tread with an orbital or belt sander, including the nosing. Hand-sand corners with a scraper or detail sander.
4. Sand the risers if they are being kept as exposed timber. Mask them off if they are going to be painted instead.
5. Progressive finer grits, the same as a floor: typically 60, 80, then 100 or 120.
6. Vacuum thoroughly and apply the chosen finish: lacquer, hardwax oil, or natural oil.
7. Two to three coats of finish, with light de-nibbing between coats.

Drying time is the main practical issue. Stairs are not optional in most houses, so you have to plan around them. A common approach is to do every second step at a time so the household can still walk up and down, then come back the next day and do the others. Water-based lacquers help here because they dry quickly.

Finish choice for stairs

Stairs need a hard-wearing finish more than almost any other timber surface in the home. Water-based lacquer at three coats is a reliable choice, and hardwax oils designed for high traffic work well too. The nosings will be the first thing to show wear over time, so it is worth being generous with coats at the front edge of each tread.

Is your staircase a candidate?

If you have wooden stairs hiding under carpet, or stairs that have been varnished badly in the past and look tired, it is usually worth getting a look at them. At Klenz Floor Sanding we have done plenty of staircases across Dublin, Wicklow, Bray and surrounding areas. Call or WhatsApp 087 673 7497 for a free, no-obligation quote.