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Installing Hardwood Stairs - After spending more than 10 years in the hardwood flooring industry, doing countless flooring jobs, I will say with at least some authority that doing stairs correctly is no easy task. Depending on your skill level as a woodworker, this project is about a 4 on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the most difficult. What makes it hard is not the labor, it's the skill. Now there are ways to "skip" steps and make it easier, but being a professional, I cannot justify that.

Step 1: Prep

Remove the existing carpet or treads. If carpet was on your staircase, you will find plywood treads and risers on the stringers. Stringers are the forms that were installed when the house was built, the foundation of the staircase. Some websites will tell you to leave these plywood pieces on, some will not. Personally, I prefer to remove them in most scenarios. The reason for this is because if you are purchasing treads, they are already milled to a thickness of 1-1/6" and are the right height to create a safe tread and riser combination.

Occasionally, I had seen where a builder has installed faulty stringers and the stairs have too much rise on them, so they build up the tread with plywood to reduce the span of the rise. If this is the case in your home, you may want to bag the DIY idea and hire a professional, for safety reasons.

Remove all nails or screws protruding from the stringers. Using a palm sander, hand sander, or even a sanding block, remove any glue or dirt buildup on the stringers. You want the bare wood exposed and in good shape, this will help you get a better adhesion from the glue in a later step.

Step 2: Measure

Professional installers carry with them a neat little tool called a stair wizard. Professionals who have been doing stairs long enough tend to make their own "wizard". What the tool does is creates the ability to make your stair treads to be marked precisely as they should fit. The reason this is important is because walls are rarely, if ever, straight. So if you have a 42" stair tread, your actual measurements may be something like this:

1 1=41 15/16"

2 2=41-1/6"

Now this picture is grossly not to scale, but it represents what I mean by not being straight. A stair wizard fits onto the stringer, extends to the walls, the installer tightens all the screws on the wizard, and you have a perfect match to cut your tread.

You can generally pick up a stair wizard for about $150. Here is a link to find out more about the wizard.

You will want to do this for every tread and every riser you are installing, whether it is a hardwood riser or a painted MDF riser. Mark each tread and riser, starting from the bottom of the stairway. Label each tread/riser 1, 2, 3...and so on until you reach the top of the stairs. DO NOT CUT THEM YET! We are going to practice the carpenter's rule #1. Measure twice, cut once. So now let's go back and do it all again. After you screw up a measurement on a few treads and have to buy more, you will appreciate the carpenter's rule, or at least your pocketbook will.

Step 3: Cut

I use a worm drive circular saw. I had a business partner who used a table saw. My grandfather used a handsaw. I would hesitate to tell you to use a specific saw if you are not comfortable with it. Whichever saw you use the best will work the best to cut the treads straight. So grab your saw of choice and cut tread #1, and only tread #1. Once cut, go see if it fits. You will want to do this frequently to make sure you cut right.

Also, when cutting, remember carpenter's rule #2. You can always cut more off, but you can't add moron. In other words, be conservative when cutting.

Step 4: Finish

There is some controversy here about finishing the tread and riser prior to installation, but from my experience, it looks much nicer to finish the wood prior to install. In a later step, you will be adding more finish.

Depending on the finish you use, and for a DIY project, I recommend polyurethane like Minwax; you will want to seal the wood. The nice thing about polyurethane is that you do not need a separate wood sealer.

So apply one coat of finish to the stairs and allow them to dry completely. This will take 2-3 days. My suggestion if you are doing this as a DIY project, do steps 1-4 on your 1st weekend, and complete the project the next weekend. This allows the finish a week to cure before being handled and/or walked on.

Step 5: Install

On the stringers, place a liberal amount of adhesive, a good all purpose construction adhesive works fine. No need to go buy the more expensive stuff that says it is formulated for hardwood, it's all marketing.

Using the open space where the riser will go and a good sharp pencil, mark on your tread the exact center of the stringers. Using a square, draw a line the full length width of the tread using your mark as the starting point. Now on those lines, mark with your pencil a sash at 4" and at 8". Where those lines intersect, you are going to want to drill holes for your screws and plugs.

Plugs come in an array of species and sizes. I recommend using a ½" or 3/8" plug. . Most treads you will purchase are oak, so you can find oak plugs. Make sure to identify whether you have red oak or white oak though, or they will not match. Depending on your décor, you can try using a different species altogether, like walnut. This gives you a beautiful contrast on your stairs.

Make sure that whatever size plug you choose you have the same size speed bore (drill bit).

Measure the depth of the plug; this is important that you are accurate. So measure it multiple times. Then measure the same distance up your drill bit and mark with a pencil. Using duct tape, wrap up the bit good and thick so that the only exposed part is what will be in contact with the tread. This acts as a guide so that you can drill at the same depth every time. You can get by without this if your drill by chance has a depth guide on it, but most affordable drills do not. Important to note that you are NOT drilling all the way through the tread, just enough to cover the plug.

Another option, for those who have the equipment, is to using a drill press to make these holes.

You should have 4 holes drilled on the tread, maybe 6 if you decide to put them on the center stringer. It is not necessary and creates extra work and increases the margin for error, so I recommend leaving the center alone. Now take the 2-1/4" wood screws and screw them snug into the stringer through the holes you just made, drop a bit of wood glue in the hole and cover with your plug. Wipe any excess glue off that seeps up from your plug. If the plug does not fit entirely flush, that's ok; you will be sanding it down. If the plug is too low, carefully dig it out and add more glue. Also add to the glue some wood shavings from your saw. This creates additional height just fine.

The risers are easy compared to the treads. Apply glue to the stringers; set the riser in place, tap in (or use the air gun) a couple of finish nails along the top and along the bottom. If your riser is warped at all, you can use a small screw, no larger that 1 ¼" long, and drill into the bottom of the riser, from the back side, and into the tread.

Repeat process up the stairwell.

Step 6: Final Coat

Using your palm sander from earlier, sand down the plugs, if needed. Using a high grit screen, like 220, lightly screen the entire tread. Tack (wipe with a damp cloth) the tread and make sure it is clean. Allow it to dry completely and put another layer of finish on. You can tell your spouse that the smell will go away, and you can tell them I said so.

One final touch I like to do it to get a bottle of clear caulk and put a small bead caulk line between the tread and riser and between the tread and the wall. Obviously this is done after the finish coat has completely dried, in about 2-3 days. Make sure to smooth out the caulk line. When finished it is barely noticeable. The reason I do this is because these are the areas where dirt is most likely to build up and cause those pesky dirt lines that are miserable to clean. Not only that, but it is a feature that very few professionals even think about doing, so it makes you look like a genius. You can tell your friends that too!

Step 7: Invite

Speaking of friends, now is the time to invite your friends and family over and show off your new staircase. Crack open the bottle of chardonnay and celebrate, because one more project is crossed off the list.

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