I used the wood tone shelf liner to cover the risers and carpet to cover the steps. The shelf liner works very well but you have to make sure the area you want to adhere it to is very smooth. This paper is very thin and any little bump will make it crease or bulge. Use tacky glue for extra grip, do not just depend on the papers adhesive backing.
The thing that I like about this paper is that I can easily cover staircases which were always a problem to match up with wood floor covers before. This way they match up nearly identically to the surrounding floor cover. You will be able to see this once I cover the living room area with flooring. This particular paper comes in two wood tones, light and dark. They are almost identical to the hues found in the Greenleaf Wood-look Vinyl Flooring. In fact in this scale, they are identical.
To cut carpet to fit on your flooring, you need to make a paper template of the floor and then cut your carpet to fit. I applied the carpet to the bedroom today and like I had mentioned before, I wish I would have gotten a darker color but carpet is very expensive and this particular one was at a discount price. It has a great rubber backing so adhesives will not seep through and ruin the carpet. It also had a great soft feel to it. It is not felt but almost like a miniature velvet. It's very nice if not a little too light colored. The good thing is that my real life bedroom, no longer has carpet but I still wanted to use some in this dollhouse so I made that little deviation from the replica goal.
You should never put carpet in while you're still working on your dollhouse but I admit, I couldn't wait to see it on there and got a little ahead of myself. I will cover the carpet up with plastic wrap to prevent any damage while I continue working on the dollhouse.
The staircase just needs a little bit of touching up here and there but it came out pretty good. I also decided to not make this room into the kitchen, even though I like the size but I just can not get over the staircase being inside of it. I will have to go with the smaller room as a kitchen and make this room the den.
These stairs do not have edges coming off the steps to give them a more finished look so I created my own by simply leaving a little overhang on the carpet I used on each step. It gives the optical illusion of there being a little lip on each step.
I also used a little piece of the vinyl flooring plank to finish off the top riser that butts against the ceiling.
I primed my entire dollhouse in all white but when you are laying down wood flooring or tile, I suggest you give your floors a coat of paint as close to the flooring color, you plan on using, as you can. This will make minor imperfections go unnoticed. You also don't want to see stark white peeking through your floor planks or tile joints.
