Installing Hardwood Floors on Stairs – Make It Easily

Installing hardwood floors on stairs is a very interesting and beautiful work. However, it requires special skills and good physical stamina on the floor installer’s part. So let’s see how we can ease the labour of flooring, guys, during the stairs installation.

As you probably know, stairs can be done in two ways: Either installing ready-made treads and risers, or making them with a set of hardwood floor boards which are to be installed throughout the house. For typesetting stairs, you will need to add nosings, to give a nice finished look to the entire staircase.

Installation of whole treads and risers, of course, is easier and faster. As you know, they are made in the factory and usually require coverage with stain and varnish. In this case it is best to install unfinished hardwood flooring throughout the whole house.

In your practice, you may have noticed that not all clients can afford this type of floor, and often install prefinished hardwood flooring instead. In this case, experienced floor installers recommend learning how to make patterned stairs, on which the treads and risers are made of the same material as the rest of the floor in the house.

You should prepare for any floor installation before you start. For Installing hardwood floors on stairs, make components of all treads and risers to facilitate your work. To do this, pre-glue the hardwood boards, so that their width and length are slightly larger than those of the treads and risers. For greater strength, staple glued boards using masking tape, and remove it just before installation.

Making treads’ and risers’ components in advance, works especially well when they need to be installed in large numbers. Why not install treads and risers all at once? What is the advantage of such preparations? The answer is easy – in making repetitive movements, you speed up the whole process.

If a customer wants to save more money on installation, advise him to purchase the unfinished nosings and then you can cover them with the necessary stain, and varnish them after you finish the treads’ and risers’ preparation.

When all the components (treads, risers, nosings) are ready, you can proceed to install them. To make your job not only beautiful but also durable, start installing hardwood floors on stairs from the top, slowly falling down.

First, measure your future stair by stair measuring device and make a markup on the components of tread and riser, and then cut carefully. You will have to repeat this procedure with each stair, since they are often of different sizes.

Similarly, you should do – setting nosings. That is, first measure the nosing’s size for one step, then crop, and then install it. Repeat the same with the other nosings. Once you’re finished, be sure to ask home owners to avoid walking on newly installed stairs during the day, at least.

Summarizing the article, I want to reiterate that installing hardwood floors by the typesetting way on the stairs, you can greatly reduce installation time by dividing the work into three phases: preparation treads and risers; nosings preparation; installation.

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