Here is a “before” picture of my stairs – ugly nasty carpet.  EW!  (uh…nevermind the arrows…I can’t find the original un-commented-on version of this picture.)

I ripped the carpet off and had new carpet installed in the hall, but I really didn’t want carpet on the stairs again.  I sanded them down and painted them, but they were way too plain.

I thought about stenciling or painting on the risers, or maybe even mod podging on some scrapbook paper, but those seemed like pretty permanent projects that I would regret someday when wanted to remove them.

I decided to go with temporary fabric – attaching it to the risers with starch.  Super simple, very forgiving and totally removable.  You can use liquid starch that you purchase in the laundry aisle, but I made my own.  You can use this same technique to cover an entire wall, or to cut out shapes and use them to decorate.  When my boys were little, I had red and blue fabric stars starched around the perimeter of their room in our rental house.  When we moved out, they removed completely.

To make your own starch “glue”, put 1 cup of cornstarch into a large pan.  Slowly whisk in one gallon of hot water.  Heat the mixture over medium-high heat until it just starts to boil, thickens and turns clear.  When you first mix it together, it will look like skim milk and the cornstarch will separate out quickly.  Keep stirring it constantly to keep it from separating or from burning.

It won’t turn completely clear, but you can definitely see the change when it is done… it will be thick and sort of  gelatainish (what?  that’s totally a word.)  Also, this makes A TON.  I would use this recipe as is if you are doing a whole wall, but in hindsight I should have halved it for what I was doing.

Set that to the side until it is cool enough to work with.

In the meantime, prep the fabric for your stairs.  I measured the riser of the stairs, and then cut the fabric to that size.  You can go just a touch bigger if you want to be safe, but remember that once the fabric is wet it will stretch.

Once the starch is cool enough that you can touch it, it’s time to apply the fabric to the stair risers.  If you’ve never done this before, I think you will be pleasantly surprised how easy it is, and how quickly this goes!  You’ll want to have a couple of towels to wipe your hands on, as well as some sort of scraper.  I used a Pampered Chef brown scraper, but you could use a taping knife or a small ruler or anything small enough with a straight, smooth edge.

Using a large paintbrush, paint a coat of the glue onto the area you will be covering.  Then, immerse the fabric into the glue, getting it totally covered, then wring it out.  It’s fine that it gets all wrinkly…it will smooth out just fine.

Position the fabric onto the stair riser, starting at one edge and lining it up in the corner.  Smooth it out with your hands, and it should stay in place.  Now, start at the edge and smooth across the whole surface with the scraper, working towards the other edge, getting out all the wrinkles as you go.  If you get too much fabric bunched up, just pull it away from the riser, re-position it and keep going.

Remember that the fabric will stretch, so you will probably end up with extra fabric when you get to the other edge.  That is ok!  Just use the scraper to press the fabric right up into the corner, and leave the extra alone for now.

Keep going like this until all the risers are covered, then leave them to dry completely.  Save the leftover glue in an airtight container until you are done with the whole project.

Once it’s all dry, you will want a metal straight edge – I thought a 4 inch taping knife was perfect for this – and a sharp X-acto knife.  Push the straight edge up into the corner, and using it as a guide, cut off the extra fabric.

Now that extra strip will just pull right off.  Trim up any other edges that aren’t quite straight in the same way.

You shouldn’t have any trouble if you always remember to hold down the edges of the fabric with the straight edge, but if you find that any of it pulls up, just use a little of the glue to stick it back down.

When you want a new look, just peel off the fabric and wipe the starch residue off with warm soapy water.