Help with the Slippery Stairs of Certain Fatal Death

[iceandsliceplease]

We're moving to our new house sometime this month and I'm getting a bit panicky about the wooden stairs. For some reason a previous owner varnished them in Super Slippery High Gleam Glossy Varnish, which makes them absolutely lethal if you're not wearing shoes fitted with ice cleats.

Does anyone have any ideas (and preferably very cheap and easy ones ) to help? The hall and landing are carpeted differently, so I think it would look odd to completely carpet the stairs...

DP is excellent at DIY and I am excellent at admiring his work, so we're confident we could tackle it ourselves.

carpet will be a lot quieter as well

you can get anti-slip deck coatings, which are gritty, but might look horrible

or patterned sheet rubber flooring, also horrible.

I hope you have good handrails both sides.

The Lethal Stairs of Certain Death are stained a very, very dark brown, and there's no natural light on the staircase, so the anti-slip deck coating could work, thank you!
Bannisters on one side, wall on the other. The worst thing is that the stairs change direction twice (they're kind of Z shaped, without a mini landing), so we have to let go of the handrail to negotiate the final bend. We might put in an extra handrail on the wall side now...

Couldn't you sand off the slippery varnish and re finish with something nicer?

Ohhhh....I actually have a recurring nightmare, involving climbing a steep, slippery staircase wearing socks.......the staircase gets steeper and steeper, and I'm clinging on for dear life........

Seriously, get some carpet down. Go to a big carpet place and you will probably be able to match the hall or landing carpets.

Get carpet.
Much safer and much much quieter!
YOu could choose one with a bit of pattern or stripe to tie the two different carpets together.

A friend of mine slipped on the stairs, fell, hit his head and died instantly (inDec). Stairs can be so dangerous.

Diy shops sell anti slip strips for stairs. They are self adhesive and not expensive.

I have white gloss painted stairs, 3 children (6/9/18 all clumsy :o) and not a single accident to sate (3 years on) so its not necessarily dangerous tbh...some carpetted stairs I have been on have been slippier! Just sayin.

How can carpeted stairs possibly be more slippery than painted gloss? Sorry but that is a bananas thing to say........

Carpet seriously. Our old house had wooden stairs with open slats - it was horrible - I fell on them several times when pregnant. Thankfully we moved just before DS eventually walked.

You can probably pick up an off cut cheaply - to give you an idea of fitting costs, we had hall stairs and landing carpet fitted last week - £220 for the carpet but the fitting was £80, so would be cheaper for just stairs.

you could sand the stairs and then varnish as you like

I fell down the stairs from top to bottom when I was 8 month pg, the stairs had carpet on them.

Cheap carpet, also that sisal type stuff, both slippier ime!

I lived in a house with my best friends for 4 years with exceedingly steep varnished stairs, neither of us nor any of our friends ever fell down them, even while pissed or very stoned, which was pretty much every night weekend

Thank you all for your help, have chatted to DP and we're going to have a look at carpet/runner for the stairs, as it'll probably end up cheaper and easier than any of the other options!

I've negotiated the stairs hundreds of times (we know the people who used to live there) and never actually fallen, but the fear of falling is huge, especially for DD (3) as she's likely to be in socks/tights and will no doubt race up and down the stairs.

Could be worse though, could be a Norfolk Winder staircase