# 70's Staircase renovation - With Oak cladding



## Knobby (30 Dec 2013)

Hi Guys,

My first post.. Be nice!! I am no pro, just a diyer.. 

I have recently moved into a house that needs alot of work. One of my first projects is renovating the staircase banister. It was a typical white painted wood with dark stained handrail/caps, look horrid and old fashioned. 

Pictures to follow of the staircase before I started. Sorry I cannot post yet as I need more than 3 posts. 














My first thought was to go with a modern all white staircase, I see they are starting to come back into fashion. My plan all the the way is to have the stairs carpeted. They will be carpeted with a cream coloured carpet. After some time and a good search on the net I thought an Oak staircase would look much nicer and more of a feature. 

The White staircase I thought looked smart..




The Oak staircase that changed my mind.. 




I first tried one of the well know staircase renovation companies, they sell in BnQ and Wickes etc. The kits sounded good but my problem was with the newel posts, most companies only offer a round newel post replacements that fit into your existing sawn off newel posts but I wanted a square oak posts. I didn't want to replace the whole newel post as they are a structural part of my staircase and replacing these was well outside my DIY capabilities. After search high and low on the internet I found a company offering oak cladding to cover your existing newel posts. This seemed perfect, they offer a range of different sizes for different width newel posts. My existing newel posts are approx 68mm wide which is quite thin, so I have had to clad my posts with some soft wood before I could clad with oak. 

The cladding kit...




I decided to order one cladding kit to see what the quality was like and if I thought I could do it. The kit turned up and I was really impressed, I knew it was going to be a big project but If I planned and took my time I knew it was possible. So I ordered everything up, 5 clad kits, handrails, baserails, spindles, etc. 

So it was time to start cutting up my staircase.. I chopped off the lower handrails so I could start work on the first newel post. 






To be continued on another post (need to get my post count up so I can share some pictures)


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## Knobby (30 Dec 2013)

My first job was to strip the wood free from old paint... My father has a cheap electric planer so this did the job. Then it was to clad it with some cheap soft wood to make it up to the required thickness of my new oak cladding. 

Another post..


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## Knobby (30 Dec 2013)

Its all been a bit of trial and error.. The first soft wood cladding was a disaster, was far to thick and we've had to plane it down lots to get the oak cladding to fit. 

But we finally got it to fit, it still needs some more work but its close. 





Another Post..


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## PeteG (2 Jan 2014)

How you getting on Knobby?  I'm looking for inspiration on tackling ours some time this year, may be next! Was thinking of replacing the boarded part with a few straight pieces to match the stairs. The main thing that's putting me off is having to re-paint everything...Keep the updates coming


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