Our basement had 100 year old stairs that had seen better days. When we originally moved in they were covered with left over carpet from upstairs.

I pulled the carpet off, painted them white and put those little black sticky treads on them. We weren’t sure WHAT to do with these stairs for the remodel. The Contractor kept avoiding the topic and acting like there wasn’t a good solution.

I spent some time googling and had a plan to fill in the gaps on the sides with spray foam and paint them all black. It didn’t really come out so great. My husband was not a fan.

We stopped by a flooring store to see if they had any thin material we could use to cover the steps (you have to be careful not to add too much height or it makes everything wonky). They showed us some thin waterproof laminate flooring that had matching bull-nose stair pieces and said their guys could install it no problem. So we scheduled it and boom. In one (LONG) day these guys came in and laid this quick flooring in the basement and all the stairs.

It obviously doesn’t match the wood floors, but definitely looks better than it was and should be a good, sturdy waterproof material for the basement.