How to install laminate on stairs // Step by step for beginners

installing laminate on stairs is probably one of those things that scares the crap out of a lot of people but it's a lot easier than you might think so welcome back to canadian diy i'm jesse and today i'm going to show you how to install laminate on some steps and get a fantastic result you can do two steps like this you can do an entire staircase so check it out first things first just make sure to leave your flooring in the room you're going to be installing it in for about 48 hours before you need it to let it get used to the temperature and humidity in the room and now we got some prep work to do so we got to take all the old flooring off the steps and any old junk that might come with it that includes old linoleum like i had here glue backing material carpet tack strips nails staples whatever you got sticking up go ahead and take it all off i had two layers of linoleum on mine i ended up leaving the gold stuff because it was really well adhered and i didn't want to fight with it anymore so i just went right over top of it but take a putty knife a paint scraper and just go over the whole works and get as much up as you can and give it a good vacuuming so with everything removed and prepped now we can go ahead and start getting the steps ready for our laminate install now you'll see here that we our toe kick actually comes out from our riser on every step there's two ways we can deal with this you can take a oscillating saw or a jigsaw or something like that and you can cut this toe kick off flush with the riser easier way i like to do it is we're actually going to build the riser out to be flush with our toe kick so that way we have a straight edge straight edge straight edge straight edge all the way across that way we can glue our laminate down this is really hard sitting like this but these steps are so low that's the only way i can do it so now we're going to grab our straight edge here whatever you want square anything that you have kicking around we're gonna set it flush with our toe kick there and we're just gonna grab a measurement from our riser in this case i've got one inch here and i've got three quarters of an inch here that i have to build this out so i'm just going to take some plywood and i'm going to attach it across here and we're going to build this guy out again if you've only got limited materials you can attach vertical strips to use less material less plywood or you can just attach an entire piece glue it and nail it in place it's entirely up to you with my plywood pieces cut i got some two inch nails loaded in the nail gun it's time to go to work now you can use construction adhesive here but i've got a lot of wood glue on hand and that's going to be plenty strong to glue these pieces into place so once you've got it slid over just go ahead and nail it like crazy kind of like i did here just to make sure it doesn't go anywhere the more nails the better and the less squeaks are going to develop over time the more nails and glue you use now on my bottom i didn't have enough quarter inch plywood to go around so like i said before i just cut a few of the quarter inch strips and then attached a three quarter inch slab in front of it and that gave me my one inch kick out that i needed all right now there's stairs built up flush with our toe kick now we can get into the meat and potatoes and that's going to be getting ready to install our laminate floor but one thing you'll notice is on my flooring here i actually stayed back from my steps a few inches just because well a this was a full plank and that's just happened to be where it ended but b i didn't actually know where my stair nosing was going to land uh depth wise so i didn't know how far out i should bring this upper piece of laminate i cut off my stair nosing here just a small piece of it just so you can see it now this is what it looks like right here now right here there is actually a small little c channel groove that we're going to screw down to the floor and that is actually going to snap into it so in order to figure out my depth to bring out my flooring what i actually did was i took just a scrap piece of laminate set it in place and then i took my stair nosing and actually snugged it up tight to there now you can see my little groove right there and that basically tells me about where that's going to end now i want to stay back from that just a little bit because i got to add in room for the metal now it's really hard to see here you can kind of see it when i grab the tape measure and hit it up against there but there is a small lip right there that's the lip i'm going to come out to so to measure from the back side of my nosing right there to that lip gives me an inch and a quarter so what i did was i took my floor piece pulled my tape measure pulled back made a mark on the floor an inch and a quarter and that gives me my exact measurement for my new piece that i can lay down and now i can get started putting my flooring on now when it comes to measuring for your tread plate you're definitely going to want to take a measurement at the front and the back side of the step just to make sure that nothing's at a square and your walls are straight mine are fairly good so i just ran with it but you may have to transfer two different measurements onto your piece and cut it to length now when it comes to the length i'm leaving an eighth of an inch short and that gives me a 1 16 inch gap on each side so i've got a snug fit but not a tight fit and it allows me to get it in there now you can see i've got a gap at the front and a gap at the back because my piece isn't long enough to fit or wide enough sorry so what i did was i took my stair nosing and a scrap piece and i made a mark that's where my flooring has to come out to so i can grab that entire measurement take two pieces of tread plate and i can attach them together and then transfer that measurement over to those pieces cut them to width and then reinstall it and double check with all the pieces cut now we can go ahead and give them a test fit now one thing you'll notice on the front and the back side of my laminate here i cut from my tread i cut the tongue and the groove off of each piece you're definitely going to want to make sure you do that from here on going out but a quick double check to this guy and it looks good so now we can go ahead and prep this for install now the difference between installing laminate on your floor and laminate on stairs is this is not floating there's no underlayment here and we are gluing and nailing this straight down to the floor down to the steps so go ahead and add a whole bunch of wood glue again the more you add the less squeaks you're going to have over time and then press it into place now you can either weigh this down or you can nail it into place just like we did with our riser there with our plywood i'm doing a combination of both i'm weighing down the center and then i'm putting a nail into each corner the front corners are going to be hidden by the stair nosing if you come right to the edge and the back corners are going to be hidden by our risers when we put those on now when it comes to measuring the height of our stair riser one thing to keep in mind of is depending on how thick your laminate is will depend on how high you need to come up with your riser you can't come just flush with your old step because that might not actually be high enough and remember there's all different thicknesses of laminates so you got to account for that so in my case i've got seven inches exactly will take me to about an eighth of an inch above my old step now the reason that's important is if we actually take our stair nosing and we set it on top of there and we hold it flat you'll see that there is a small gap underneath here so if i only brought my riser up to be flush with the step i would actually every time you step on it it would actually push the nosing down so what i have to do is i actually have to bring my riser up slightly above the step here in order to make it flush with the bottom side of my stair housing right here and that will actually give me a flush surface so every time somebody steps on it nothing's gonna flex and give so with that in mind i've got my two pieces that i'm going to use for my riser here obviously this is too tall right now i know i need seven inches exactly but if i measure seven inches exactly i'm only going to have about a centimeter piece of this top board here which won't really look good so i'm actually going to measure from here down and i'm going to make my mark and cut this side off so it will shift this line down just like my tread plate here and that will actually give me two good sizes of boards just for aesthetic purposes now i'm going to show you how to install the risers whether you've got the tongue side or the groove side sticking up for your two pieces now in this case i have the groove side sticking up so once you've got it glued i'm just going to go ahead and attach a brad nail through the groove and that'll hide my nails so i don't have anything visible then i can add a thin bead of glue and i mean a thin bead of glue to the groove attach my second piece and then i can nail through the face of that one and those nails will be hidden by the stair nosing now on this one i've got the tongue side facing up and i've also made this out of two pieces i'm making my steps at a scrap board that i had kicking around so you can absolutely do that but just like before i'm adding wood glue to the groove side of my second board because that's where the groove was and i'm just going to lock the steps into place with each other and then i'm going to go ahead and add my nails into the top corners which again will be hidden by the stair nosing just like before now you can also add a nail into the bottom corner of each one of these where they won't be seen if you want to step seven is our stair nosing now the easiest way to install that if you really want to right now i've done it before nobody's going to blame you go ahead and just cut it to length and brad nail it in place quick simple done only thing is you're going to have some brad nail holes on the top that you're going to have to fill in just touch them up with a little bit of wood filler find the stain that's really close to the flooring color you've got touch it up with a q-tip problem solved however if you want to use a little metal track that it comes with and snap it down into place we're going to do just a little bit more work here yet now depending on what thickness is a laminate you have they come in like a 4 all the way up to a 16 mil i've got a 12 mil here that i installed you may need to shim your floor up to hold your track in order for your stair nosing to actually snap down into it because otherwise your track is too low because the laminate is too thick now as you can see here i've got quite the gap between my two pieces of laminate so with a quarter inch piece of plywood it's going to shim up my metal track and that puts me about perfect so now i need to cut a whole bunch of these little quarter inch shims to fit underneath my track in between my two laminate steps but hey got to do what's got to be done with the stair nose and cut to length all we got to do is get our track down now i'm just putting a bead of glue on all these little shims and then one nail into each edge and that's plenty to hold it in place now i'm using my stair nosing to set the depth of my track now this will actually just get it exactly where i need it to then just go ahead and use a few number six one inch long wood screws and screw the track down just a quick double check everything looks golden so now we can move on now one thing i can tell you that will make your life a lot easier getting that uh stair nosing into the track is take a pair of pliers and just open up the track ever so slightly you can see i'm not doing much i'm just folding the edges open just a little bit because if you don't do it snapping this track in is going to be near impossible now i had to make a couple relief cuts for my little kick outs there as well as for my baseboard but it's nothing you might have to do it if it's a flat piece that'll just make it way easier i like to start at one end go ahead and get it lined up lower into place and then just smack it down from one side to the other nothing scientific all that's left is some finishing touches so we're going to finish any nail holes you may have put through the face of your wood or any that may still be visible now those are easily filled in with just a little bit of wood filler smear it on your finger and just touch it to the nail hole and then wipe it off with some paper towel once it's dry we can come back and stain it with a q-tip and a stain that closely matches your flooring now in my case it's carbon gray and i'm also going to put a little bit along the inside edge where i had a little bit of chip out and i could see the fibers underneath this step is totally optional in my case though i've got winter time so these are inevitably going to get wet and get water on them but i'm using some transparent waterproof silicone and i'm just going to seal up the edge between my tread plate and my riser i'm also going to put some along my edges to seal up that 1 16 inch gap that i left beforehand again you don't have to do this totally optional but i like the finished look that it gives just make sure if you do do this to have a very small tip cut on your silicone you do not want to apply a whole bunch of material here just a thin bead to fill in the gap you don't really want to get a whole bunch all over the steps because it is going to end up glossy if you do [Music] so what do you think looks a whole lot better than the mess we started with don't you think i think they turned out fantastic i'm super pumped with it if you guys end up using anything that i showed in this video if you guys tackle a project like this let me know down below i would love to hear until next time thanks a lot for watching you guys i'll see you later

Channel: Jesse does DIY

Views: 2,117,776

Keywords: diy, how to, how, beginner, instruction, rustic, tutorial, made, maker, carpentry, laminate, steps, stairs, stair, step, flooring, floor, lvp, lvt, vinyl, tile, hardwood, install, installation, easy, renovation, home, reno, update, inexpensive, cheap, simple, clean, how to install laminate on stairs with stair nosing, install laminate on stairs, how to install laminate on stairs, beginner laminate, beginner laminate flooring, how to laminate on stairs

Id: 5HkIFQbIRIg

Length: 15min 31sec (931 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 26 2020