Stair Cladding

I built the first floor stairs quite a while ago, back in August of 2014, actually. They’re a combination of LVL and OSB, and the intention has always been to skin or clad them in wood. We debated a bit whether to do all stained or white risers and skirts with stained steps, and we finally settled on the latter, since the underside of the stairs is drywalled, and the stairs up to the attic are also drywalled since they’ll have carpeting, plus they don’t stock red oak plywood locally. With the hardwood flooring going in, now’s a great time to get this project into gear.

I ordered pre-made stair treads that are routed to fit our stairs. The stairs are open on the right side all the way up, so this means we have an overhang of the tread bullnose on that side as well as the front. The retro treads are unfinished red oak, just like the floors, and were made (fairly) locally in Goshen, Indiana. After some back and forth with the company to confirm the specifications, they made them and shipped them over along with the newel posts. With stairs up to the attic and hallways overlooking the stairs, there’s actually quite a few newel posts.

I picked up a cheap Wen track saw, which is awesome. I’ve wanted a track saw for a while, since they’re great for cutting large panel goods in straight lines, much easier and more accurate than trying to manhandle a 4×8 sheet through the table saw along a fence. I went with quarter inch veneer plywood for the risers, because they’re just going to be painted, so there isn’t any need for them to be particularly thick. The OSB behind it is already 3/4″.

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After vacuuming the steps and removing a kazillion staples from when the spray foam installers put plastic over everything (and then continuing to find stray staples throughout this process), I started from the top, gluing and stapling the plywood to the risers. All of the riser pieces I cut slightly shorter than the height of the risers themselves because the tread will overlap at the top and cover the edge at the bottom. That simplified the sizing, since I have at least a half inch of “fudge”. I did a test fit with the tread and realized the top step needed the depth padded, so I had to scrap my first attempt. I added some hardwood flooring scraps and the second try worked better. When I got to the side skirt, which covers the side of the stringer, I cut a strip the correct length, but then mistakenly cut too much off the end to make the angle where it meets the second floor. Oh well, I was going to have to pick up another sheet of plywood anyway.

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I went to Home Depot after it stopped raining and picked up some additional supplies, including another sheet of quarter inch veneer plywood, which I wratchet-strapped to the roof of our hatchback. Not 500 feet from the store, a gust of wind caught the leading edge and ripped about three feet of it off, pinwheeling over the car and landing in front of the car behind me. I quickly pulled over and shoved the ripped off piece into the back seat. Fortunately, the tear happened in a spot that I could still use it. With the additional sheet back at the house, if in pieces, progress continued more smoothly. I was able to cut the remaining pieces for the risers, and then the skirting for the larger run.

One of the things that I neglected to mention is why I’m doing this project in the first place. After all, we hired out the rest of the house, right? People have shown up to do siding, the roof, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, spray foam, drywall, tiling, build the front and back porch, tile the bathrooms, lay the hardwood flooring, so why am I working on stuff at all? The answer is, not surprisingly, money. Our GC quoted us $22,000 to clad the stairs and install railings up to the attic. Material costs for all the treads, newel posts, balusters, rails, plywood, etc. is several thousand all told, but it’s not anywhere near that, so I asked what the cost for labor would be if we bought all the materials ourselves, and he said $11,000. My problem is that I know roughly how to do these things and how much time and effort is involved. In my opinion, this wasn’t anywhere near eleven grand in labor, so I told the GC I’d do it myself. So here I am, installing the stair cladding and eventually newel posts, railings, and balusters.

Now, in fairness, I did need a lot of tools to do this work. Just for this project, I used a shop vac with dust extractor, scraper, needle nose vice grips, mini pry bar, track saw, allen wrench, jig saw, miter saw, router, channel locks, impact driver (with three different bits), a pneumatic stapler and accompanying compressor, putty knife, measuring tape, angle finder, combination square, pencil, gluebot, shop light, utility razor, hammer, straight edge, and two different chisels, and that’s before I got to sanding and painting. I could have done it without the track saw, but since I was already saving money and I knew I’d get more use out of it down the road, it was easy enough to justify buying. All of the other tools we already had, which is part of why we sign up for these projects.

With the riser cladding attached, I first rough cut to the steps with the jigsaw, then followed up with a flush bit on the router. Since it’s only quarter inch plywood, this went fairly quickly, with just a couple spots the router couldn’t get into and I had to use a razor blade. I added outside corner trim to the bottom edge to transition to the drywall underneath, which involved some fancy cuts that actually turned out pretty well. Once everything was glued and stapled, I went over every staple and joint with Drydex, a kind of spackle. I’ve read that for painted wood, Drydex is a better choice than wood fill. I started out using a putty knife, but quickly switched to my fingers like an overgrown pre-schooler playing with Play-Doh.

I came back a bit later and sanded everything smooth, reapplying a couple of spots and hitting a few more proud staples with a hammer. The thicker joints were still pink so I decided to leave it overnight. The next morning I sanded and reapplied a couple of the corners again. The one downside to the Drydex is that it’s a little too easy to sand, so I wound up taking too much off and then having to add it back on again. Eventually I got it smooth enough to put on the first coat of paint, of course finding new spots that would require touch ups. After this cycle repeated for a bit, I finally reached the point where it either looked good enough or I didn’t know how to make it look better, and I rolled a couple coats of finish paint on.

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The last step in the process was to install the treads. I was concerned about using a brad nailer, since I don’t want any squeaks, so I decided just to use PL Premium glue. There are a total of fifteen treads, so I bought a couple tubes, which turned out to be woefully inadequate. I started from the top and worked my way down, cleaning each rough tread and then squeezing on an even pattern of glue before pressing the finish tread into place. I ran out of glue, ran to the store and bought two more tubes, and then got the rest of the finish treads in place.

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Then I had to clean up all my tools since the hardwood floor guys were coming back the next day, which unfortunately meant I needed to take a lot of stuff upstairs. I made the mistake of thinking this wouldn’t really affect the glue set up, and by the time I was done several of the treads were loose. This meant I had to go to the store again and buy more glue, so I could reattach them. Then, because sometimes this is how things go, there were more loose treads than I realized, I used up both tubes, had to run to the store again and buy still more glue, to finally finish things up. The next day when Sarah and I tried them out, we discovered one of the treads squeaks.

The hardwood floor guys are back and they’re going to finish the treads along with the floor. When they’re done, I’ll most likely pry that tread back up, scrape down the glue, and re-glue it. The good news is I think I still have enough glue left.