Many people ask me for new oak stairs as they are living with an old or tired staircase. The following information will expain what you can do to make your stairs look great again.

Gathering more information will allow you to make an educated decision on what will work best for you. Wooden staircases are timeless and will always offer a look of elegance.

Here is a breakdown of what each bit of a staircase is called:

Treads….  these are the components running from side to side which you step on as you go up and down

Risers…. these are the vertical componemts running from the back of one tread to the front of the other tread

Strings…. these are the side pieces which the treads and risers slot into, one generally fixes against the wall going up the stairs and the other is opposite it

Newel post…. this is the square post at the top and bottom of the staircase which runs from the floor and is approx 1200mm high from the bottom step

Baserail…. this is the rail which sits on top of the string to receive the spindles

Spindles…. these are the decorative timbers inbetween the hand rail and the base rail

Handrail…. this is the part you put your hand on to go up and down the stairs, the spindles are grooved into the hand rail.

Newel caps…. these sit on top of the newel posts as decoration. They are available in lots of different designs

Everyone loves the idea of a new oak staircase and they do look amazing. However, you cannot change the strings to match the new handrail and spindles etc because the string is the main part of the staircase.

Therefore you would be asking me to replace the full staircase instead of a revamp in short thousands of pounds instead of hundreds if you are working with oak. Of course you can clad over the strings but this would have to be with oak faced MDF to avoid shrinkage, personally I do not like to mix real oak with oak faced MDF.

Newel posts; most of the time I can replace the newel post with no problems. Sometimes I have to half lap joint the new post onto the old post and sometimes (generally if the post sits within a curved or bullnose tread) the post have to stay put and we decorate with it a matching newel cap.

Hand rail, base rail, spindles and newel caps can all be changed without any problems and really make a staircase look beautiful again.