Whether to refinish stair treads or replace them comes down to one measurement. A worn strip down the middle of every tread while the edges still look new is the most common thing we are called to look at. It sands out. What decides the answer is how much timber is left.
Wear happens where feet land — refinish stair treads
People walk up the centre of a staircase. Over twenty years that traffic lane loses its finish while the outer few inches of each tread keep theirs. The result looks like damage but it is surface wear, and sanding takes the tread back to clean wood.
Every refinish spends material
Sanding removes a layer. Do it twice over the life of a staircase and the nosing — the rounded front edge that takes the most wear — gets thin. On an older house the treads may already have been done once before you owned it.
We check the depth above the nosing and how close the fixings are sitting to the surface. If a screw or nail head is near the top, that tread has had its last sand.
Signs a tread should be replaced instead
Fixings visible or almost breaking through
The nosing has worn thin or chipped away
A crack running with the grain, not across it
Any flex or sound underfoot when you step on it
Rot at the ends, where a tread meets the stringer
Individual treads can be replaced without touching the rest of the staircase. It is not all or nothing, and one failed tread is not a reason to rebuild.
Old wood is worth keeping
Treads in older homes are frequently better material than anything you can buy to replace them — tighter grain, cut from slower-grown timber. They take a stain with a depth that new lumber does not have. Where there is enough left to work with, refinishing gives a better result than replacement, not just a cheaper one.
Finding out which you have
It takes a look, not a guess. Stair refinishing covers the process, and stair remodeling is the route when the problem is the design rather than the finish.
If you are weighing this up on your own stairs, stair refinishing covers what the work involves. Finished work is on our Facebook page.
