Looks great!

That looks really good! They were very pretty stairs to begin with, but that runner really finishes them nicely :)

Thank you! I took a photo from the basement of the first three steps and the landing:

Maddie approves!

That looks so great!

But sorry, I just can't take my eyes off the brick-a-licious floor :)

Omg I am going to use that....brickicious!! I love it!

In addition to the runner and the brickilicious floor, I'm also admiring Maddie and the green wall color. Can you share what the wall color is?

Looks great! The green is fantastic.

Thanks everyone! The green is a custom color. We tried 14 shades of green and could not find the perfect one so we started building a green based on the formulas of some other colors that were close, like Dill Pickle and Fennel.

Beautiful! I love your beautiful home. Each element is just so lovely.

Thank you! The plantation shutter on that window to the left is going to be painted the Charleston green (black green) of the doors thruout the house, and that is also the color of the exterior shutters.

One unhappy note today, I had them remove the single pane French door to the patio and rehang our old 9 light door. The new door was damaged upon arrival (3" gouge out of one side), the lock set holes had been drilled too close to the glazing and the wood was splintered where the holes were drilled. They hung it before I inspected it, but within 24 hours I told the GC I would not accept the door. That was TEN WEEKS AGO! He has done nothing about getting a new door, so in yesterday's email come-to-Jesus manifesto I told him to put my old door back, credit the difference and I would get my own door after they were finished. He was surprised, I think he thought he would out wait me or something. Lol, as if :-)

The runner is perfect and they did a great job of installation.
Too bad about the door but I admire you for not just accepting things when they are not perfect.

Lyban, I will say that one of my mottoes is not to let perfect become the enemy of good. I am all about good, even very very good, but not necessarily perfect.

Love the runner! And the matching rug at the bottom is great. Of course the brick floors are the coolest thing ever!

The "rug" at the landing is actually the end of the runner that starts in the basement and goes up three steps to the landing. Then they used another runner, cutting off the end design, to start under the tread of the long run upwards. At the very top each stair tread and riser was upholstered with a different piece of carpet, each piece was cut to fit because otherwise the borders would not match. It took them hours, but I'm glad they were so careful.

I love all your choices but especially that dear little dog, why breed is it please.

Continued love!!!! (Every step a terrific revelation!)

My favorite is the little furry baby on the steps. My second is the gorgeous floor and third, how well you have put everything together including that beautiful runner and how it all melds so well Love your whole house.

Gorgeous runner! I like your solution for addressing the door, bet that was quite a disappointment to your builder.

Thanks everyone ;-)

The furry friend is Maddie, short for Madison, who is a half wire hair Jack Russell and half rat terrier....she is a determined little lady. We adopted her from someone who was going to take her to the pound at 8 months old (silly woman bought a dog as a substitute for her cat that died). Maddie immediately went out to conquer our neighborhood and had a run in with a horse on an adjacent farm.... Concussion, displaced pelvic girdle, hospitalization, then crate rest for six weeks. She recovered nicely but still holds her right back leg up when going down stairs. She's the reason we have a fence with large rocks piled at the base on both sides (to discourage digging under) AND an invisible fence (because she realized that when the pond was low she could swim to freedom through the culvert from our pond to the creek outside the fence). She's the reason our place looks like Stalag 13 when you drive up and notice the rocks.

One of the photos shows a white haze on the runner end on the landing...it is bad / iPhone photography, not actually present on the runner.

Love it! Love it, love it, love it. Perfect choice.

Your runner is beautiful! I am planning to refinish my stairs and have a runner installed. Can you share what kind of pad (and thickness) was used under the runner (if any)? The treads on the stairs in our old house are not deep, and I'm concerned that the pad under the current carpet further constricts them and obscures the nosing (the installer insisted on a thick pad to "protect the carpet"). So I'm interested in thinner materials overall, including any padding if necessary, to maximize the tread surface. Thanks for any information you can share.

kkay, if the treads on your stairs aren't deep, reconsider putting any carpeting on it. That can make them even more dangerous.

If you do go itch a carpet, go with a very thin carpet and no padding.

Other options are to treat the wood with a product that makes such stairs not slippery (mind have it,and it works. I have VERY steep stairs with VERY narrow treads - no carpet, but when they were built, apparently they were treated so they're not slippery, and they aren't), and perhaps paint a runner pattern.

Our pad is very thin, it is a rubberized mat ---not the waffle kind, but a very dense rubber foam. It was 3/8th inch I think, the installers brought it. I wouldn't eschew a pad under the stair carpet as it will wear out very quickly. Our runner actually makes our stairs safer, Tibb, because it gives one's shoes something to grab onto. We have a back staircase in the new wing (new= 1994) with about 17 steps, then a landing, then 13 more, and are considering doing this same thing on those for safety reasons.

Looks great...they did a super job lining up the stripes on the top 3 steps....love Maddie's pose too!

It looks fabulous, kswl! I love what you did with the pattern on the landing. It adds such a perfect detail and makes such a nice transition point. Love that 'brick-a-licious' word!!

But, kswl, your treads are wide enough for all sizes of feet. Kkay says her treads are very narrow. With very narrow treads, carpet makes stairs more treacherous, esp. with padding underneath because it softens the ends of the step, which then makes it easier for feet to slip over.

Tibbrix, I agree on that. We were recent guests of friends who have narrow treads and have padded carpeting. I almost fell twice. I don't have really large feet. It appeared the step was wider than it really was and my foot was hitting the padding/carpet instead of the tread step.

I thought narrow referred to the width of the stair, not the depth of the tread. ?

But I agree with you that a shallow tread is very dangerous--- with or without carpet. If a tread doesn't have enough depth for comfortable foot placement it is clearly not up to code. That should be addressed before anything.

Stairs and code are tricky. If it's a new build, the stairs have to meet the code. However, in older houses, they are grandfathered in (like in my house) because the stairs were built around the structure of the house that was already in place, before the new codes.

So, for example, I did have a builder come over to look at the stairs to see if they could be pulled out in order to have deeper treads, but it cannot be done.

Cape Cod has a LOT of these kinds of stairs, so it's kind of expected. Ironically, they're safer for children. But adults have to come down them sideways. So far, no one has fallen down the stairs, and like I said, they're not slippery because they've been treated for that very purpose.

You have to deal with what you have! But, stairs are almost impossible to "bring up to code".

Stairs can be rebuilt to code, it is done all the time around here on historic homes if this is the main stair to a living area. When we bought this house, I took an appraising course to make sure that our renovations weren't over improvements for the area, size and acreage, etc. A main staircase not to code all but makes the property unsellable, historic or not. To be protected from code it has to be listed in the national register of historic places. But that's in Georgia, I know rules vary by state. I guess if the owners have over lived in a house a long time and never pulled a permit to change or build anything, inspectors would never see the defect and no one would ask for changes until it was sold.

Thanks for your replies. To clarify: our staircase is up to code. I just want to maximize the depth of the treads by having a thinner pad and runner that hug the steps (like the runner in your photo). My son wears a size 14 shoe (he's a tall lad).

I prefer a runner to bare wood for reasons of appearance, sound, and safety. I'm steeling myself to tackle the project and am gathering as much information as I can. Your lovely runner is an inspiration. Thanks again.

You definitely shouldn't have any problems with this type of pad then, because it is so thin it will maximize the tread depth with runner. It is incredibly dense, though and provides a really nice feel to the runner.

In hindsight I'm glad I did not know the inset border would make installation so much more labor intensive--- not sure I would have chosen it had I known. But I do love the way it looks!