Here is an idea for capping off the carpeting at the top of a stairway so it won’t fray or get in the way.
When the carpet guy installed the carpeting on our basement stairs, he finished by wrapping the carpeting over the top step and tacking it to a strip of oak. This worked fine for a couple years but inevitably, the carpet frayed at the top and gradually pulled away from the wood strip. The carpet also protruded slightly above the adjacent tile floor so more than one person stumbled on it when using the stairs. The cat also treated the protruding carpeting as a scratching post which didn’t help the situation.
Custom made oak carpet trim
To remedy the situation, I removed the old wood strip and replaced it with a custom milled piece of oak with a lip on it to cover the exposed edge of the carpeting. I also cut the carpet back to be flush with the underside of the oak trim and tacked it firmly against the stair riser.
Floor without trim strip
The trim piece was 3″ wide by 30″ long and made from a piece of 3/4″ thick red oak. It’s held in place with four countersunk brass screws. To make the trim, I used the table saw to cut out a rectangular section to form an L-shape and then beveled each long edge with the blade tilted to about 35 degrees. After lightly sanding the surface, I applied an oil stain and finished with two coats of satin polyurethane. As it turned out, the cut-out piece was the same thickness as the final trim piece so I was able to use it as a temporary cap until the finish dried.
Installed oak trim