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.