Hardwood Stair Treads
We purchased a new house in Louisburg, KS in late 2016 that was near to completion. In our negotiations with the builder/owner, we told him not to finish off the basement which included not installing carpet on the basement floors or the stairs. After I finished off the rooms in the basement, we had to decide on carpeting. The stairs were set up for carpeting, but I felt they would look better with flooring that matched the hardwood floors in the entry way and living room.
Our existing hardwood floors are red oak stained to a medium/dark brown. I bought 3/4" bundles of 3.25" wide red oak flooring at Lumber Liquidators. My plan was to build treads that fit over the existing stair treads. The existing treads would provide additional strength so all I had to do was fit the new treads instead of replacing the treads.
Hardwood Stairs Treads Build
Here's a few comments on the progress on the stairs.
Building the individual treads was a fairly straight forward decision. I'd build, stain and poly in the shop and just glue it down in place. No assembly on the stairs, everthing done in the shop.
The landing at the bottom of the stairs was a different matter. I thought it may be better to treat the landing as a standard floor and install the individual boards and sand, stain, and poly the boards in place. As I considered this, the only advantage to flooring the landing board by board is that it would be easier to fit it.
Turns out too many factors made it made it smart to build it in the shop and install it as a single piece:
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I could get the sanding, staining, and poly done while containing the mess in the shop.
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I joined the rest of the treads by squaring the edges and joining them with biscuits and glue. I didn't think I could get that same tight joining using the flooring tongue and groove mating.
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I've never installed flooring. I felt my chance of a successful installation would improve by using a method I know.
The outside corners of the treads that hangover the edge of the stairs were challenging. To get a perfect 45 degree cut, I normally depend on my miter saw, but the edge of the stair treads are double thickness at the outside edge and single thickness on the inside of the edge board. I couldn't get the board to fit properly on the miter saw to get a perfect cut; I had to make the cuts by hand.
I used a fine blade saw and controlled the cut by having a 45 degree square clamped to the board. I used the square as the saw guide. After a couple of practice runs, I was able to make the cuts properly. I ended up with tight seems that I was happy with.
