Professional Stair Tread & Riser Installation - Complete Install Process

welcome back to the channel everybody in this video we are going to be tackling hardwood stair treads as you see right here i've got an open staircase this is going to get popular risers and hardwood treads got lots of tips and tricks for you in this video on how to get a really good quality clean install on hardwood stair treads we've got our treads prepped and ready and now it is time to start putting the treads and risers in now the two stars of the show are going to be one these stair tread gauges and two the festool hkc this saw has paid for itself more times than i could possibly count it's wonderful for installs like this you'll see why as we get into this to get the measurement for our riser we'll be making a template using these stair tread gauges now it's important that you take a pencil and mark the right side and the left side of the stair tread gauges that way you don't get it mixed up and flipped around but all you do is simply loosen your little wing nuts on here push it tight to the side and then re-tighten them you're going to do this on both sides until you're satisfied that you're nice and tight on both sides so now i'll go ahead and carefully pull this out and we'll move it to the riser a couple things that you'll notice about these risers is number one i put a five degree bevel on both of the end cuts that leaves a little gap right there the adhesive can get in and then it makes so the front edge stays nice and tight to the skirt board the other thing is on the top right here is that five degree bevel going downwards that way we can get adhesive on here and the front edge will stay nice and tight so you need to make sure that as you mark these this top edge is always the 5 degree bevel so as i have my stair tread gauges laid on here i know that the top up here has that five degree bevel on it and this is the face of the riser after you get your stair tread gauges in position aligned on the bottom edge you'll take out a sharp utility knife and you simply use your utility knife to mark the ends you use a utility knife because it's got a very sharp crisp line and it's more accurate than using a pencil which is going to give you a wider line and going to be harder to follow after you're marked simply move that off and we'll go ahead and cut this with our hkc track saw you want to make sure that your track saw is at a five degree bevel go ahead and lock that in and then it's just a matter of dropping the track splinter guard on that pencil line making the cut [Applause] [Music] pl premium is the name of the game on something like this we put a generous amount of pl on each of the risers but also notice i put a bead right here on the ends and that bead right there is going to absorb into that 5 degree bevel right there that way we're getting adhesion between the riser and the skirt board take the riser ensuring that the 5 degree bevel is on top insert one end and then just rock it in that five degree bevel is going to make so it slides right in really easily we'll use some kind of a gauge block like so to get the front edge of the riser on the same level as the treads i like to keep the riser just a hair higher than the tread that way we've got room for adhesive on here if you have it exactly tight and then you put adhesive on the tread might not sit down tight against that front edge there so we'll get that so there's just a little bit of space on all of these that looks pretty good to me and now i'll put a nail at the top now you may notice that your stringers are not perfectly in plain if you're crowned in or something like that you might have to tap this out a little bit to keep that running perfectly straight if you do we'll just fill in on the back side with some adhesive back here now it's time to get our tread template so we'll use the same process that we did for the riser loosen your tread gauges up a little bit and get it tight on the end re-tighten it you may actually have to go back and forth and do this a couple times if it's a little bit of an oblong opening here i'm just trying to make sure that this back edge of my tread gauge is aligned with the front edge of the riser once you're satisfied again making sure your r is on your right side go ahead and carefully lift it up out of place so you don't move it and move it on top of your tread we'll align the back edge of the tread gauges with the back edge of the stair tread utility knife sharp blade [Music] just give yourself a nice score line now the tricky thing with making all these different bevel cuts is you've always got to remember to set your saw back at either zero or five degrees or whatever you want so here i'm actually going to one degree and i'll show you why in just a second [Music] now i cut that about half degree bevel or one degree but now i'm going to go ahead and bump it over to five degrees i'm going to bevel this back side up until about an inch and a quarter where the nosing is and that'll help this slide down into place here's another trick you may find that as you're dropping treads in if you don't get the fit just perfect what it can do is it can actually push the skirt board out and it'll open up a gap right here now this one was actually undercut like it's actually about perfect but what i want to do to prevent this gap from opening up here or down here is just take a grk screw just take a screw and go through your framing stringer into the skirt board and what that's going to do is it's going to pull this together tight and kind of tie everything together a little bit better so i'll put a screw through back here watch this gap it'll probably close see how that closed up right there [Music] that's what that does so tying the framing stringer into the skirt board after you have your riser in it'll help prevent your tread from opening up any gaps right here so i'll lay that in and push it back it's a pretty nice fit [Music] and then we'll go ahead and nail across the front edge here now on the back side here i want to make sure i'm down all the way but then we're going to screw in from the back side through the riser with pocket hole screws inch and a quarter pocket hole screws now i went ahead and screwed in from the back side there you can see those pocket hole screws off the bottom there and that pulls this together really tight you'll also notice that this did not open up having it all screwed together through the framing into the skirt board helps pretty decent on the ends this one's good on the back um the skirt board is a 1 by 12 and it's got a bit of a cup in it so it's hard to get that perfect but still pretty good as soon as you put a tread in go ahead and unroll some protection to put over there that that way you don't risk getting any subfloor adhesive that might be on the bottom of your shoes we all know that pl premium loves to get absolutely everywhere and one mistake and you could end up tracking oily peel premium up your entire new staircase if you don't have protection on it so that's why you just take an extra 30 seconds after each tread and get some paper on there and that keeps it from getting anything dirty or oily on it okay well it's actually a new day and haven't been super productive today i just got finished up with lunch and i'm going to try and finish this staircase up we've got five more treads to go and i'm going to give you a closer look at the smaller details that i'm doing give you a little bit better up close shots as to what's happening and give you some tips and tricks along the way [Music] [Music] alright [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] right so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] hey [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] now we treat the last tread a little bit differently you can see i've got my riser in here i put a bunch of pl premium behind that and then i actually took my pry bar and just pulled it out a little bit so then whenever i go to put this tread in it's got a two degree bevel on it and then adhesive on the back we'll push it right up against this driver this riser and even though we can't screw from the back side it'll still be bonded with adhesive so so that's it guys we've got the whole staircase in i'm going to keep rolling now on the newel posts and balusters but if you've got any questions drop them in the comments below that is how i know what to put in future content videos so if something doesn't make sense let me know hope you've enjoyed the content hit the thumbs up button subscribe if you're new here and thanks for watching as always we'll see you on the next video

Channel: Insider Carpentry - Spencer Lewis

Views: 323,802

Keywords: insider carpentry, finish carpentry, DIY, stair installation, stair tread installatin, how to install stair treads, how to replace stair treads, how to cut stair treads, how to build staircase, tread and riser installation, oak stair treads, hardwood stair tread install

Id: S-FUthZ8aU0

Length: 15min 9sec (909 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 21 2022