Ever since we moved into our house, I have hated the stairway. After we painted the woodwork white, I felt a bit better about it. The thing that drove me crazy was how much the stair treads squeaked when you walked on them. There's nothing like loud squeaking noises to make you feel like an elephant as you walked down are stairs. It's hard to quietly sneak around as well.

After talking about it forever, we finally decided to get carpet for the stairs. Ordering it a few weeks ago forced us to do something about the squeaking. We knew that just putting carpet down wouldn't get rid of the noise. The internet is great because we found directions on how to put nails in at 45 degree angles to slience the squeak. It worked brillantly. After putting quite a few nails in the treads, I went the extra mile and sanded them and put three coats of poly on them. They looked so great, I thought it would be a shame to put carpet over them. BUT now that the carpet is in all I can say is WOW.