As you can see from this photo, the treads were just plywood. I took this photo after installing the trim down the sides of the stairs last weekend. When I did that, I made templates for both the tops and bottoms out of cardboard then scrap plywood. They helped a lot by giving me the opportunity to fuss with the plywood rather than the $40(each!) 1x10s I was using for the final trim. With the prep, template making, and installation, it took the better part of a day to get these installed.
I bought the rest of the supplies yesterday from the Home Depot. I used pre-cut pine treads and 1x8 pre-primed trim. I urethaned the treads outside yesterday so that they'd be ready to go today. I spent almost an hour this morning getting the materials, tools, etc. laid out before I started and boy, am I glad I did. By the time I started, everything was at hand, which made the work go much quicker than I thought it would.
Here are the steps I followed for each tread/riser pair.
- Measured the tread and cut it to length.
- Measured the riser and cut it to the correct length and width.
- Drilled two pocket holes on the bottom of the riser.
- Attached the riser to the tread with pocket screws. This basically made them into a single unit.
- Removed the tread/riser pair and applied a healthy dose of construction adhesive to the stringers.
- Put the tread/riser pair in place.
- Screwed the tread to the stringers from below with two pocket screws per stringer. This really drew the tread down.
- Nailed the riser to the stringer (from the front) with finish nails.
- Repeat
There were 12 steps. The whole thing took about 5 hours, which I didn't think was that bad.
Here's the final product. I'm quite happy with how it came out.
Hi N, How are the pine treads holding up? I'm going to do my basement stairs this summer and I'm trying to decide to go with pine or oak.
ReplyDeleteThose stairs look awesome!
ReplyDelete