the winning runner revealed

Thanks for all the great comments and thoughts about our stair runner choice. Most of the votes were split between option number 1 and 2 from our previous post with lots of commenters and facebook friends saying they liked number 2 and 5.

We liked them all for different reasons but installed our choice this past weekend.

Before I show you that...let me show you how our stairs looked the day before the runner was installed:

Isa likes to line her babies up for naps and it makes me giggle to see them on the stairs like this. (and I have no idea why none of them have clothes...hmmmm)

OK - down to the reason for this post. For review, here are the choices we had.

And we chose runner number...............ONE!

A couple thoughts on some of the other runners...
#2 - We liked it but once we saw it on the stairs the main color that popped out was the orange in it. If we would have had orange on the main level somewhere...anywhere...we would really have liked it, but we don't so it just didn't flow well.
#3 - It's really similar to the one we chose and our dining room rug...but we thought it might make us a little dizzy if there was a huge amount of those tiny stripes. And being dizzy while walking down a set of stairs is a little dangerous. :)
#4 - LOVE! I loved this one. The sample we were sent was actually a pillow sham and guess what....we kept it! It's my 'second option' for bedding so when I get antsy and want to change the look of our bed I get out this monster sham and it's perfect!
#5 - I also loved this one but didn't like the feel of it since it was a really scratchy outdoor fabric. Great for cleaning, I'm sure, and the look was perfect...but not the right choice knowing my baby had to crawl up and down the stairs for a while on a brillo pad-ish fabric. Ouch.

Where are these rugs from?
I sourced lots of different rugs and finally found Dash&Albert. They are by far the most beautiful and stylish for the money. It turns out that a nearby store was a dealer for them and shipped everything to us for free which was also a bonus.

Here's the process:
The first step was to touch up painting on the white backs of the stairs and the ballusters. There were some little splashes from the stain that I could NOT cover. I tried Kilz Stain Blocker and then layers and layers of Sherwin Williams white SuperPaint on top - and can still see the stains. Grrrr. Any suggestions to cover those areas better?

To keep cost down we didn't order a continuous runner...but you'd never know! We got 4 different 2x3 rugs and one that was 3x5 since the bottom stairs are wider and we wanted the runner to be wider as well.

The tools: a ruler, pencil, scissors, scraps of an old rug pad (and then a couple new rug pads because we underestimated what we needed), and an upholstery air-powered staple gun (and special staples to fit the gun that took me a day to track down).

I found the center point of the stair and started stapling the first rug at the top. The goal was to only staple on the white wood and try to keep staples off of the stair tread itself in case we ever want to pull the runner off.

We cut a piece of rug pad to fit each stair underneath the rug. It is amazing how much cushion this added AND it made the rug less likely to slide. I tried my best to stretch the rug itself really well before stapling it to make sure it wasn't going to loosen much as we walk on it - and I think having this pad underneath will help with that too. (and note - most of the rug pad pieces were larger than this and wrapped around the bottom of the step it was on...this one happened to be cut when we were running out of our rug pad - oops!)

The completed stair runner. See how the stripes stop matching when we switch to the wider runner? The hubs hates that but I don't mind it at all. It was a necessary thing because of the way the rugs are cut.

 Side view.

And a view from the top. The kids love it...although they complained at first that they couldn't "slide down the stairs" anymore on their bums. Score another one for mom! This was an added benefit of the runner...because let me tell ya...it's scary watching your babies tumble down the stairs because they were trying to slide head first or lay straight on their backs. Scary...and it can't happen anymore. :)

I still think wood stairs sans-runner would be the most beautiful option. But with the safety concerns with kids (and me...those stairs were slippery if you tried to go down them in socks...and had a wiggly baby in your arms). I'm pretty happy with the fun stripe-y rug.