Cleaning up the stairs

Missy’s entryway has been fairly “industrial” since her conversion started. Meaning… black and ‘warning yellow’ rubber-like flooring on the stairs, exposed mechanical bits, and generally pretty ugly. I decided to spend some time improving this area – purely out of vanity.  I know… but this is the first thing a person see’s when they come to visit.

Ha!  Like I have many visitors!!! 🙂  Still…

Since the beginning, I’ve had big plans for the stairs – thinking of a nice wood-look.

This is a fairly old photo but shows the original stair covering and ‘industrial look’.

To accomplish that, the original and very ugly rubber mat that was glued in place had to go.

Yeah… getting all that out took a bit of work.

Pulling it out didn’t take too long but whoever installed it knew how to use contact cement. That left a very ugly looking staircase with lots of adhesive all over it.

Of course, I tried simply scraping it off but it was not budging.

I’ve had reasonably good success with “Goo Gone” on other messes so I gave it a shot. To my surprise, it worked quite well. Not to say that all the remaining adhesive just fell off but it sure came off a lot easier.

I’d spray an area, let it sit for a few hours, and do some scraping.

After a few days of that, the staircase was looking pretty good! Well… not actually “looking” good but looking like it was ready for some improvements to be started!

If it isn’t obvious from the photos, the staircase is one solid piece of molded fiberglass. That means that using screws or nails to attach things to it is not a great idea. A flooring that could be glued in place would be best.

Every stair is a different size and shape so that adds to the challenge!

I considered carpet – for both the stairs and the surrounding panels. I like the feel, warmth, and sound deadening benefits of carpet. However; I don’t like how much work it is to install in odd shaped places (see this post on carpeting the doghouse in my first motorhome) and its ability to collect dirt and water make it a poor choice for this area.

My next thought was a wood laminate. A trip to the local home improvement store revealed the fact that there are quite a few options here. A variety of thicknesses and even good looking vinyl laminate. Of course, the ‘floating’ options probably would not work very well on stairs. Conforming to all the angles, attaching it to the stairs, and finding a matching stair nose molding are all complicating issues.

I’ve purchased a few options and am currently “testing” them.  The winner will be revealed soon!!