paintingstainingstairs
I removed my old stair runner and now the outside looks different from inside.
You can see that from the blue arrow:
It is hard to see with a few steps but if you look 10 steps up, it's very obvious in the afternoon (dark).
What is the best way to address this? Should I sand and stain them again?
Thanks.
You can likely answer your own question with a little experiment. Before committing the whole deck to large amounts of stain application try a small area on 1 or two boards where you've sanded on one side and the weathered grey is still on the other side. If you like the result you will know what to do. If you dislike the look or match then you can proceed to close up the stain can and go back to sanding and scrapping the rest of the deck surfaces. The place where you put the stain sample over the weathered grey can be sanded down to fresh wood right along with the rest of it.
There are 2 ways to do this, the first way is in essence just cutting the wall at the top of the skirt board and capping it off and setting the handrail on top of the cap that is finishing off the cut wall, sounds a bit crude, but essentially that describes what you will have.
The up side to this is you will not need to do a floor repair, depending on where your wall ends where the newel will be.
The other way to do it is by removing the wall entirely, repairing the floor, removing the treads and risers, and set longer ones with return nosings on either side. and re-support the stairs with a new walls under the existing carriages.
This is the most work, but will give the best result in my opinion.
Jan. 2, 2014 edit
Here is the work I did in 1989 that shows what I did.
This one shows the best example of the effect I was trying to explain. I do not have a shot that shows how the handrail goes past the ceiling, but with a little imagination you could picture what the rail would have to do if the stairs were much wider at the bottom.
Edit #2
I did a little calculating to help, if it may
Best Answer
What you're actually seeing is the polyurethane that's been exposed has ambered ( turned yellowish ). Sadly, that's a byproduct of using oil based polyurethane. Now that the center is exposed it will eventually amber as well.
If it really bothers you, you could try sanding the treads just enough to remove the existing finish. Just be careful not to sand thru the stain. Then clean the treads, with a rag lightly dampened with water or paint thinner, to remove any dust left behind. Finally recoat with fresh polyurethane. I'd recommend at least 3 coats with a light sanding in-between each coat to remove any bumps or bubbles and to give the next coat something to grab and stick to.