Installing Hardwood Flooring on Stairs
Installing Hardwood Flooring on Stairs
After finally getting my hardwood stairs completed, I felt it was time to post my notes so that others do not have to go through all the greif that I did to get my stairs completed. Posting my completed stair pictures to the Toolmonger flickr pool resulted in many emails requesting help on accomplishing the same thing. Unfortunately, there is no single resource for installing Hardwood stairs on the Internet, so here goes…
First, lets get some terminology out of the way:
- Skirtboard: these are the boards that run along the wall, between the stairs and the wall.
- riser: this is the board that sits behind the tread, vertically. (white in the pictures).
- tread: this is where your feet go when you climb stairs
- nosing: this is the rounded over piece of hardwood that gives a nice rounded front to the step.
- stringer: these are the “bones” or backbone of the stairs, the treads are attached to these, as are the risers. Typical stair cases have two or three.
The preparation of the stair case is the most important step, as this sets the platform for everything else that follows. The more time you spend on prepping, the better your stairs will be. In my case, I had carpet over softwood (pine) stair treads with plywood risers. After taking off the carpet, I quickly realized that it was going to be easier to put down new 2×10 treads as the old ones showed their 20 years of abuse. I could have planed down the treads to take out the concave warping, in my situation, I wanted to get my stairs as silent as possible. $30 of wood later, and I had new stair treads. Now, there is a trick here, so pay attention! No wall is perfect, and you are not going to want any gaps whatsoever, so the first step is to under cut the stair treads to accomodate your skirtboard. In my case, my baseboard was 1/2″ wide so my skirt board will be 1/2″ wide. You will also want to remove the risers at this point. I chose to put mine back on and use them as backing for my MDF risers, so I also cut them so that they could accommodate a skirtboard down each side. Important, Glue and screw the treads in place. This will keep the stairs from squeaking! Pl premium construction adhesive is your new best friend!
The purpose of the skirt board is to give you a flat edge to butt the hardwood planks and nosing up against for a tight fit. You’ll want the skirt board to meet the ends of the stairs at the same height as your baseboard, in my case, my baseboard is 5 1/4″ tall, so it has to meet at the top.
You should be able to drop your skirt board down the sides and nail them in place with finish nails. Use a stud finder and make sure to attach to the studs, depending on the length of your skirt boards, they can be quite heavy. Since my stair case was 12′ long, I was able to get a two 12″ wide 14′ long sheets of MDF at a custom moulding shop. None of the big box home center’s carry extra long plywood, so you’ll have to phone around.
The next step, is to put in the first riser at the bottom of the stairs, you can use brad nails or finish nails to attach it to the stringers. then you need to measure, and put down the correct ammount of flooring, leaving enough room to glue down the nosing to the stair tread. I used construction adhesive, and finish nails to keep it from sliding forward. I then used my collection of heavy networking and programming books to hold it down until the glue had set.
Then you start with the riser, and repeat the same steps for putting down the tread and nosing, and repeat until you reach the top.
You are going to end up with a few minor gaps, this is normal, and why paintable latex caulking was invented! I also use it to fill small nail holes as this saves you from having to sand and paint. I pre-painted all of my parts, and it saves a lot of time, and reduces the risk of ruining your new floor.
Matching the stair to your hardwood is difficult. This is where a good paint/stain store comes in handy. To match mine, I took a sample of flooring, and a peice of nosing to use for testing at the store. Benjamin Moore in Canada is very accomodating, and their staff know their stuff, so its worth the effort. After you get the colour down, the next part is the clear coat, make sure that you buy a clear coating at the same time as the stain, you want to make sure that the two products are compatible.
Please note that this post is still a work in progress, as I remember various aspects of this project, I will refine the post. If you have a question, or a comment, please post a comment below and I will do my best to try and answer in the comments.
Thnaks for posting this. I’ve been looking for a set of instructions all over the internet.
Your stairs look great btw!
Hello there,
I wanted to inquire about installing stringers on hardwood stairs, If you could please email me back to explain exactly how to do this, it’s my first contract with this company so I wanna make a very good imression and do it properly.
Riley Chervinski
Listen buddy okay. I have been doing hardwood floors for years and have a very well known company. Lets start off by first saying you better take your stair notes off the internet and study some more. First off your terminology is wrong. Stringers are the boards running along the wall. Then you have risers and treads. Second you do not put your tread on before your riser, and third your finish work has gaps like crazy. A true hardwood floor installer would consider this shoe maker work, and using any woodfiller or silicone on stairs is work of a rookie.
@Podium You are incorrect, the boards that run along the stairs attached to the wall are called Skirt Boards. Stringers run underneath the stairs providing the structure for the treads to attach. Do the stair cases you build float in mid air? Hopefully this link will help you: http://www.finishcarpentryhelp.com/skirt-boards.html
I’ve never claimed to be a professional, and I have not claimed that my instructions are the only way to install hardwood on stairs. Every project I look back on and I can think of a 100 things that I would do differently, that is part of learning, something you are hoping to suppress. I also posted that the picture above was not the finished product, I think its time to post an updated completion picture.
I’m not going to take my notes off of the Internet. If folks want to use my notes to help with their own DIY projects, thats a good thing, and if they do not get the information from me, they will find somebody else on the Internet. Asking me to take my notes off of my website to protect your business is pretty lame, and I could have just deleted your comment, but instead I have elected to post it in its fully glory for others to see.
If you have a well known flooring company, post a link, with some images of your work. Don’t be an anonymous coward.
Your finished work looks really good
I too work at a flooring company for over 7 years now and for someone who has not installed hardwood on stairs before I think you did a good job. Well done
I also will give you Kudos as I also have been working on new flooring and stairs. There is a lot of information on the internet about how to do them and you have now added some more information. I think most of us, with the exception of Podium, know that you should pretty much always take the information found on the internet with a grain of salt. Most of it is good and when put together with other information on the subject will usually tell you how to correctly do something.
Anyone who supposedly has a “very well known company” and does not know that it is indeed a skirt board will NOT be doing any work on my house.
Great instructions! I’ve been looking for a long time on how to build steps, and your instructions were straight forward and easy to understand. Unfortunatley, I’m building wood stairs over stairs designed for carpet, so I have to custom cut my skirtboards to fit around each step. This will be tricky, but with some scrap wood and a square I should be able to get it done. Thanks.
@Mike – Glad you found them useful. Thanks for the comment.
FYI skirt boards are also called trim stringers.
Just curious as to why u chose mdg for the risers?
sorry MDF
Hi Rick –
I choose MDF for the risers because 1. Its Cheap, 2. It takes paint well. 3. Its smooth and would not require any filling.
Since I was planning to paint the risers white, I didn’t see the need to use even a cheaper wood like pine as I would have to fill knot holes etc.
What did you use for the landing at the top or bottom of the stairs?
Great to see your instructions , it s realy helpful – I am using a handy man to do the complete flooring and wanted to understand more on the flooring on the staires….it is very clear and easy to understand for a person like me without much DIY knowledge…appreciate more posting on this. My only concern is I have rounded portion on the landing aread (down) after the staires , just above the launch room , what can I use to connect the vertical and horizontal woods ?
Thanks a lot….Gopu
I’ve been doing alot of reading and it seems the Stringers are the sides of the stairs where the tread and risers butt-up against. Is that right?
Some call them stringers. Stairbuilders, and finish carpenters call them skirtboards.
Hello,
We just took up carpet today and found that the stairs are actually gaping from the wall about a quarter inch in some places. Any ideas?
Thanks!
I am writting from Ottawa Canada. The proccess you’re discribing is known as “Stair Re-facing. This application is used when a staircase can be revamped as opposed to replacing at about 40% of the cost. If the original stairs are in decent shape…this is a good way to transform your existing stairs into a center point of durable beauty. However….in my case as a professinal, I used edge-gluded solid hardwood for the steps (TREADS) as for the sides (STRINGERS) and the backs (RISERS) we use plycore hardwood veneer sheeting 1/2″ to 5/8″ in thickness. In the earlier days of stair refacing, I used flooring and bull nosing and in time we found the bull noising would seperate a bit from the flooring and leave what we call black lines. Most people who walked up stairs apply most pressure to the front edge causing it to give way…..we then starting using stair treads and the problem were solve.
Anyway….your approach is great and I have always encourage others to do as much as they can…good for you
@steve Thanks for your comment! I agree, edge glued hardwood would have been a better choice. Actually, I would have loved to make complete solid treads with a bullnose in my workshop, but at the time I did not have a jointer to get a nice edge glue up.
@Rachel This is quite normal, carpet covers a multitude of sins
You can replace the treads as Steve has indicated.
Hey, I am in the middle of a stair job myself. I could care less about the terminology, really you could call the treads apples and the risers oranges and we would all understand if it was explained correctly. Shame on you naysayers who have chosen stairbuilding as a career(two thumbs down), but I guess not everyone has an IQ over 30. Anyway, your finished product looks great and thats what im going for.
@tealyn – Tanks for the kind words, and best of luck to you on your stair project.
Hiya,
My husband is installing new hardwood solid oak treads and want to know what screws he should use and how to cap them. Is there a special tool to cut the caps? Every site I have looked at uses PL200 adhesive glue and finishing nails. He insists that stairs should be screwed and glued. Can you help? Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Gloria
Hi Gloria -
If your husband wants to screw them down, that should be fine, but I would also use PL200 as well. To cover the screw heads, I’d recommend using this kit from Lee Valley: http://www.leevalley.com/US/wood/page.aspx?p=32934&cat=1,42884,32928,32934 You cut a plug from a similar piece of scrap, glue it over the nail (with wood glue) and then cut it flush to the tread.
Great Article indeed.
I have carpet on my stairs and I just discovered that the wood is what some call “construction wood” (looks like plywood).
I wanted to have hardwood on top of the existing stairs.
1) Every installer I spoke to, was adamant about having to replace it with “oak”, quoting between 100 to 250 bucks per step, just for the labor alone.
2) Each person in the trade believes that it is a bad idea to have hardwood on the stairs because it is “slippery” or will move with the weather”
Can I please have your feedback? Thanks in advance
Hi Sammy –
In a perfect world, I would have made solid treads for my stairs as I do like the look of the solid steps as opposed to hardwood planks. That said, I can’t see how the hardwood flooring installed on the stairs would be more slippery than similarly finished floor treads. You’ll find that hardwood flooring installed onto stairs is pretty common in a DIY installation.
Installing laminate onto stairs is an issue. Its super slippery, and its difficult to finish the nosing correctly. I know, as I tried. I am hoping to replace the three stairs that I did in laminate with custom solid oak steps laster this summer.
thanks for your info on how you went about your staircase reno. I am currently working on a staircase (my first one) for the mom-in-law. She had carpeted stairs made of plywood. I have removed the old carpet and plywood and prepped the stringers for the new components. I had my risers and skirtboards made out of 3/4″ birch plywood and the treads and floorong for the landing made of solid birch. I spent a full day with a randon orbit palm sander getting all the planer marks and imperfections out of the materials starting with 80 then 100, 120, and 150 progressively. The materials look amazing and are as smooth as can be. I am treating the wood with a varathane to keep the natural color of the wood. One problem I encountered at the start of the project was that the stringers were not cut square. The tread cut of the stringer is level but the rise cut is out almost 10deg… I wanted to replace the stringers but she did not want me to so I shimmed each riser to be plumb and square. This is my first staircase project and she is delighted with the finished product however I always am the biggest critic of my own work. One mistake I made was accepting 8ft lenghts for the skirtboards and putting them together in two pieces. Although most people would not notice the joint after it has the final coats it’s the first damn thing I see. Also I managed to get all the risers in perfectly seamless to the skirtboards but…A couple of the treads have about 1/16″ gap between them and the skirtboard. I was I would have used templates or a stairtool/jig to custom fit each one as I used a measuement and a random orbit palm sander to fit them…the gaps a virtualy un-noticable as i filled them with a natural wood filler and sanded them and varathaned. Just for the record the next time I do a staircase I would def spend the extra time and money to make the job result not just be good but perfect!
I think you did a fantastic job for not ever having done this before….I love DIY jobs! Way to go, looking forward to the updated pics!
Great thread. The value of this thread to me is that I can see other non professionals get pretty decent results and I can see their pride and satisfaction. Most of my work actually looks better that the work that the Pros did for me in the past. I guess that Podium guy is just mean or feels insecure about the fact that other people can do his job also, maybe not perfect but good none-the-less. Keep posting on your other projects. I wish I had the time to do that myself. Have to run now, kids are crying!!!!!
I actually would love some feedback from you fine folks.
I am wrapping up the laminate flooring project in my basement but my dilemma is that I will have a 3000+ pound aquarium in that space. Trust me when I say, that floor will no longer be floating!!! I plan on simply using transitions around it and have it sit on it’s own little 3ft X 5ft floor. That way the rest of the floor can move but under the tank will simple be pinned to the ground.
Am I missing the boat? Is this over kill?
FYI. The room is a large one 25 x 15..so lots of potential for expansion.
I think they look great! especially for your first …… I am hoping my first turn out that good, as i am in the process of my first staircase also.
It was also carpeted and same scenario, pine with terrible gaps. I am using the retrotreads. They r oak. I have cut them already on my tablesaw. Didn’t do too bad for 1st time using it. I even decided to go with a different look n the risers which i have photographed with the temporary fit prior to staining and finishing everything with the final fits…. It is a split entry so 6 steps r visible from the main entry all the time. I am undecided if i should stain and finish treads before i actually place them on the stringers….. what do most people do? what about the nail/screw marks/holes after you’ve already stained/finished them? anyone who has done it both ways? found it to be easier one way or the other? thanks for input…. i’d attach the photo but don’t know if i could….. Deb