old stairs

Hi there!

My husband and I just bought a 100-year-old house. We pulled the carpeting up off the stairs--they are in pretty bad shape, but could probably be salvaged with some sanding and tlc. What worries me, though, is that they don't seem to be that structurally sound. There is a little bit of give on two stairs in particular, and the small landing that joins the two parts of the staircase seems to be detached from the wall a little bit. I don't feel that it's dangerous, yet...

My question is, should we go to the trouble of refinishing the stairs? Is it feasible to replace the stairs that are giving us trouble? We didn't notice the problem when the stairs were carpeted. Is recarpeting the best solution?

I'd really like to refinish the stairs to wood, but don't want to go to the trouble if we're just going to have to replace them. My husband is also worried about being able to replace stairs (he's heard it's one of the hardest home projects there is). But he's very handy! Input?

Also, if anyone cares to settle a dispute: we'd like to refinish all of the fir floors in the house (they're in good shape--just need a sanding and coat of poly). Friends have advised us to pay someone to sand them down, and then poly them ourselves. My husband thinks we could do the sanding. I'm worried we'll end up with a big hole in our floor. We're poor, so it would be great if we could do it ourselves, but I don't want to make a mess of things. What do you guys think?

Sorry for the long post!

 

Do you have access from under the stairs.

 

Nope! Anything we do would have to be done from above.

 

Look at the reply I wrote for ( Fixing creaky steps before refinishing- 3/18/03 )

 

Thanks! We'll do that.

And on another note, we tried the drum sander on our wood floors--it worked great! Thanks!