Run, Run, Runner

There's a poll to the right so scroll down and be sure to pick your favorite stair runner from the options in the last picture of this post. Also feel free to tell me 'why' you chose what you did. I love hearing your thoughts!!

Here's what our staircase looked like before all the water damage work began. It was a favorite place for the kids to play...and still is.

 

Notice the rough textured walls and narrow door opening on the far side. One side had a banister and the other side wall went all the way down to the end of the stairs. You can also see a little wall niche cut out about four steps up.

Quite a bit has been changed in this area. The pictures below show the progression of how the staircase has changed over the past 2 years...
Here it is prepped for the tearout of all the upstairs ceilings and walls to begin.

Then we widened the doorway by cutting the wall back to the end of the niche I mentioned above.

Then we closed in the hallway that was next to one side of the staircase. (It's now the Master Bedroom closet.)

Then we decided to tear out all of the stair treads, plane them down, and reinstall them. We now have a completely squeak-free staircase which is pretty nice!! (and unheard of in a house as old as ours)

 

We had to completely rebuild the bottom 4 steps with new treads and a much wider first step so we could have two posts at the very bottom.

 Here is what the staircase looked like last weekend. We had stained all of the steps a dark color (the same as the hardwood floors throughout the house) but they had gotten really beat up so we had to give them some TLC. We removed the banisters and posts and tip-toed around them while the polyurethane dried so we wouldn't step on any of the balluster screws. :)

And this is how it looked at the end of the weekend and how it still looks today. You can see that all of the rough walls were scraped down to smooth (just like the ceilings). Wow - that was a MESSY job but we love it. (by the way...we kept the rough texture in parts of the living room and dining room)
There's still some work to be done with paint and the handrails. (they're not the final color they will be and they're still not attached completely)

Now for the part where you can give your opinion. We are putting a stair runner on the stairs. Here are the reasons:

1. We like the look of nice stair runners. (and were excited to find out they are WAY cheaper than we anticipated)
2. The back of the stairs always look icky and constantly need to be repainted or cleaned with all the scuff  marks we get without a runner.
3. It will be less slippery and with all our kids, that's a big deal.

Keep in mind when you're choosing the stair runner you like the best...this is what our dining room rug looks like and it's in the room right next to the stairs. It's from here. (We got it on clearance from the last store in the country that had it after last summer...ahhhhh...I love a deal!)

Here are the runner choices. They all have stripes and they all have blue in them. Red is the accent color we have in the rest of the house so keep that in mind too.
Which is your favorite?