Installing Braided Stair Treads

Installing braided stair treads is not difficult, however you need to be aware of a few guidelines in order to do it right, else you'll end up doing the work twice. The first thing you need to do is check whether you already have a carpet on your sitarcase. If you do, you need to remove that prior to doing anything else. Once the carpet is removed, go ahead and clean the barebone stairs, including removing any glue or adhesive residue belonging to the previous carpet and if you have any cracks or holes in your stairs, you need to fix those first.

Basically the idea is that the stairs should be nice even and level for a proper installation. If your wooden stairs are in bad condition, you should fix them first. Just think about it. The stair treads are centered in the middle of your stairs, so the sides of the staircases are showing. Do you want to have some ugly pieces of wood showing near your beautiful new braided stair treads? If the wood on the stairs is ok then all you need is simply clean it up a bit.

Placing braided stair treads on your inner and outer staircases is important mostly for safety reasons - your safety and that of your stairs. Your safety due to avoiding accidental slips and falls and the safety of the staircases since wooden stairs are not cheap to renovate.

When you buy your braided stair treads you will notice that they already have a double sided tape underneath for placing on the stair and they are usually precut to the right size. So installing them is really easy once your staircase is clean and level.

Installing braided stair treads:

• Measure the thread against the actual step to make sure that it will be centered nicely on the stair
• Push it as far back as you can on the far end of the step
• Remove the paper to make the tape visible
• Press down on the tape tightly in order to secure it in place
• Check for any overhang over the step front which might get you trip over the steps

I've been asked whether one could use regular pieces of carpeting to use as stair treads. The answer is, yes you can, however you need to do a bit more work for it. Here are the steps for those who have extra pieces of matching carpet and want to use them on their staircases:

Installing regular carpet as runners:

• Measure the stair and measure the carpet so it sits nicely in the middle. Trim to size
• Now staple down padding on the step
• Use a tackles trip and place it on the back of your carpet piece that will be used as the thread. Simply attach it to the padding.
• Finally staple the carpet front to the padding

This solution is mostly used for outdoors to avoid slipping and tripping when coming home. To be honest, for inner staircases I'd suggest you go with the real thing as not only looks much nicer but it gives you and the stairs an additional layer of safety and security (particularly if you use anti slip stair treads) that a regular piece of moving carpet would not be able to offer.