Big change, low cost

Several years ago, we decided to carpet our hardwood stairs.  The stairs were very pretty but every time anyone went up or down them, it sounded like we had a herd of elephants dancing in our house.  So we had carpet installed.  It was nice for about five minutes.  For some crazy reason, I chose a very light tan color for the carpet.  I'm not sure what I was thinking!  The carpet got stained and stained and stained.  We shampooed repeatedly and for a little while the stairs looked good again.  But it never lasted.  The stains were too deep.
We thought about taking the carpet out and having a runner put in but that was too expensive.  We thought about new carpet, but that just seemed wasteful since the carpet is in great shape, just stained.
Finally, I mentioned something that I had been thinking of for a long time, but was afraid it was just plain crazy.  Why shouldn't we dye the carpet?  Crazy, huh?
Well, we did it.  We bought two bottles of dark brown RIT dye and just bit the bullet.  I was so scared with the first swipe of the sponge.  What if I ruined it?  Fortunately for all of us (and for our budget) the dye worked beautifully and we now have chocolate brown carpet on our stairs and the landing at the top of the stairs.  It was hard work, but it's so much fun to do something you've never done before!

The picture above is the carpet before being dyed.

Below is the landing at the top of the stairs.  The picture is really dark.  I don't think I used my flash. Oops.