Wood, Laminate, or Vinyl Plank on Stairs for Beginners

hey youtube it's robert back with another video and in this video we're going to be focusing on how we change from a carpet to a hard surface on our typical staircase now i will touch on a couple of the less common things that we might encounter when doing staircases but we're largely going to be focused around our typical standard staircase that's going to apply to the vast majority of you out there now i'll note that a lot of these things will still apply even if we're changing from one hard surface staircase to another but a lot of the initial challenges really come from when we're changing from a carpeted staircase to some type of a hard surface so we'll talk about some of the key differences in the structure of the staircase as well as how we overcome some of those challenges depending on which type of flooring that we're going to put on the staircase and specifically what type of edge profiles those products offer us for those of you that are new to my channel my name is robert i'm here to help with all things remodeling so if you want to take a quick second and hit that like button for me comment down below at the end of this video with any questions that you might have and be sure to subscribe if you'd like to follow along for more videos from me in the future and let's jump right into it okay so here we have our model staircase you guys are kind of looking at it from a side profile here and we're just going to start by defining a couple of the terms i'm going to use throughout the video so that you know exactly what i'm talking about as we go into more detail but when we're looking at our typical staircase and we're talking about the portions of it that are being covered we basically have two components we have the portion that's going vertically which we call our riser and then we have the portion that we're actually stepping on which we call our tread now standard dimensions for each of these are going to be roughly six to seven inches on our typical riser and then on our actual stair tread it needs to generally be somewhere in that 10 to 11 inch range this can vary depending on exactly where you're at but that's just kind of a general idea for you as to what those dimensions should look like all right and then we're going to call the piece that kind of hangs out from the tread over the riser the stair nose now you'll notice on these bottom three steps we have an actual tread with a stair nose that protrudes out in front of the riser by contrast our very top step we can actually see here we have our tread and our riser with a completely flush 90 degree edge that stair nose has basically been eliminated and our step is just a completely squared box there that's going to be kind of important when we look at some of the ways that we finish the stairs based off of the different products and the options that we have to go about it if you currently have carpet on your stairs you probably have one of two looks with it and the first is going to be where your carpet actually rolls all the way around and comes back over the stair nose so that you actually still see that nose defined um it gets stapled into that corner and then the riser goes down and your carpet basically is completely flat on that riser the other option that you may have is what we would call a waterfall edge where the carpet just comes over that stair nose and just falls straight down to the corner of the next tread so we don't actually have the stair nose appearance although generally it is still going to be there and you can typically just take your hand feel kind of by pushing into the carpet that you have that stair nose that still is protruding out there so one of the first challenges that we often face when we're moving from carpet to a hard surface staircase is what do we do with the existing stair nose that's on there because most of our hard surface products that offer us a stair nose have traditionally been designed where that stair nose does not cover the existing it actually replaces that so what we would have to do is eliminate the part that's protruding out and create a complete 90 degree edged box like what we see up here we would do that by either cutting off the existing stair nose or more commonly we back fill it with an additional piece of plywood so we actually bring the riser forward to the same dimension as that stair nose so now we have that recreated 90 degree effect like we see up here now quick note because we're not talking a lot about tile today but if you wanted to put tile on a stair then you really have to eliminate this all together because 99 of the tiles that you're going to be finding are not going to have any type of a true stair tread with a nose there are a few out there and some newer products but typically with tile you're going to have an actual squared box step and you will not have a stair nose at all it will stay a box even as it's finished you'll maybe have your bull nose or some other type of metal finish on the top to create that softened edge but then the tile underneath comes right up and it basically finishes flush with each other now as far as our stair noses go when we're talking about the types of stair noses that are offered from your manufacturers to match whatever particular flooring you choose there's traditionally again going to be two options there one is going to be what we call an overlapped stair nose which is what we see here at this step and overlapped means that that new stair profile actually sits on top of your tread so you have this little bit of a lip across that stair nose where your stair nose covers a portion of your floor now the other option we could be dealing with is a flushed stair nose where your flooring material and your stair nose are actually flush they're the same height and you do not have anything that's sitting on top of your flooring creating that slight lip at the edge of your stair now what's really cool is today there are a lot of new stair noses so depending on what type of product that you're looking at you may have options where we don't have to actually modify that staircase but it really is important for you to understand that that may have to be done and if you're working with a contractor that's talking about that that's what they mean and it could be posed by the limitations of whatever particular stair nose your material offers now if you're looking at using a solid or engineered wood flooring and you want that same floor going on your stair where we're not talking about a solid piece of wood that's being put on the stair tread but you're actually using some of your floor planks to go on there then your manufacturers generally will offer a solid wood flush stair nose so it'll match the color of the flooring but it is designed to replace that existing nose not go out on top of it so we get back to that square box we were talking about and your new solid wood stair nose would go on top and at the edge of that with your floor planks behind it now if you're looking at laminates or some of the new waterproof vinyl planks then there's going to be a lot more variation in the types of stair noses that we see from manufacturer to manufacturer for instance this top stair tread here is a waterproof floor that offers a solid waterproofed core product as its stair nose so this is kind of more similar to what we see generally in our engineered woods by contrast we have another waterproof vinyl plate that offers this overlapped stair nose and this particular piece is designed for you to be able to install it without having to do anything to that staircase to modify it because the front profile goes down far enough that it actually covers that nose now what that does mean is that the bottom of that stair nose is not covered with anything so if we have the ability to see under there for any reason you'll actually have an unfinished portion of your step but otherwise looking at the front of it you would never really even notice that now our last two steps here are going to be another waterproof vinyl floor that has a stair nose that's actually hollowed out so that you can slide it over the existing stair nose and then our bottom stair is going to feature a laminate product that actually offers a whole another system with a metal track that allows us to lock in a piece at the front and let our flooring go all the way to the very front edge so these kind of vary from one manufacturer to the other but these are going to be alternatives that help to eliminate the need for us to modify that staircase before we put our flooring on gives us a little bit more flexibility to just remove that carpet and then start installing our new floor right away so the examples we've used so far we're talking about a situation where we're ordering a coordinated stair nose to the actual flooring that we ordered so the same manufacturer we're getting two separate pieces now those stair noses that we purchased through the manufacturer are generally going to be as short as six to six and a half feet and as long as about eight foot a lot of them are right at seven foot and ten inches so depending on what the width of your staircase is you're only going to be able to get one to two stairs per nose that you have to order now those pieces can vary wildly in cost so that's something that you'll want to discuss as well when you're shopping for those pieces but in all of these examples we are ordering that piece to match the flooring that we purchased now a couple of these next options are going to be a little bit more of a customized situation that i have access to in my market and we use for our business but i don't know that's going to be available everywhere i believe this is something we're going to start to see more and more commonly offered but depending on where you're at this may or may not be available to you certainly is worth asking about when you're working with your contractor the first example here we actually have a engineered hardwood floor where we've got the stair nose made out of the plank itself and we do that by our mill shop actually mitering the two corners and putting an additional piece of the flooring on the top of it this is something that we've used a lot for some custom staircases because it allows us to do some really cool things and we have a guaranteed 100 percent match to our floor because the stair nose is made from the floor itself where with a lot of the manufacturers that are making the pieces that you order from them the stair nose and the stair floor are not always a perfect match because oftentimes they're made in two different facilities so even when they're maybe using the same stain the access to the particular materials is just enough that they may not be a perfect match whereas with this it's your actual flooring so it is a perfect match now as we've gone through these we've seen this evolve to the next instance i'm going to talk about where they don't actually even have to miter and cut these pieces separately and then glue them together we actually now have routers that can take a v-shaped groove into the plank itself allowing us to fold that piece over so it's actually all one plank that's just been folded to create the stair nose amazing technology not something that's going to be offered everywhere but if it's something that you have access to gives you the ability to make a really cool stair nose one thing to note we are going to be looking at a square stair nose edge so if you like the look of a rounded stair nose this isn't going to be applicable for you now the next example is kind of like what i just talked about with the wood where instead of having to cut and build that stair nose by gluing a couple of pieces to the edge we're going to still use that new routered ability where we create a v-shaped groove but we can do this with both laminate and with the waterproof vinyl planks now so this particular stair nose is actually a waterproof vinyl that has had that notch done twice so that it folds over and then glued that allows us to make the actual stair nose height pretty much as thick as we want so that we can very easily slide that right over our existing stair nose and you don't have to hardly do anything with it makes it really really simple because we still have our tongue and groove or our locking system intact on the back side so we can just drop our flooring in and continue it down the rest of that tread very very easy for installation purposes this technology is something that is still relatively new and i don't see it being available everywhere but i do see that that's probably the direction things will go over the next few years so again something to talk with your contractor about see if it's an option alright so so far we've been largely operating under the assumption that we're dealing with a standard staircase where both sides of the boxed step are enclosed by a wall if you have a situation where one or both sides of the stair are actually exposed on the ends then you have to worry about how we finish the return of that step generally that's going to mean we're mitering the stair nose and having a separate stair nose come down that return but again depending on the type of product that you're using how that is achieved can vary dramatically and in some cases you may not be able to use your flooring at all and it might actually need to be made out of a solid piece of wood that they can shape however it needs to be done instances where you have very dramatic radius curves those are going to become more and more limiting in terms of how we can utilize these standard pre-made options and the likelihood of something custom made is going to increase significantly the good news is for most of you you're dealing with something like this but for those of you that have those open exposed stairs or maybe a floating step where you don't even have a riser your tread is basically floating and all four sides of it are viewable then again a lot of things change so in those instances you really need to make sure that whoever it is that's doing your install you're having a very definitive conversation with what that finished result is going to look like so that just about covers all the basics guys obviously there's always a lot of additional variables depending on your specific staircase but hopefully this gave you a pretty good idea of what you can kind of expect when switching from a carpeted stair to some type of a hard surface staircase as well as what some of the new and cool options are to eliminate some of the work and the modification that needs to happen to your stairs before it's ready for your new flooring to go on it so if you found this video helpful be sure to hit that thumbs up button for me and comment down below with any of your thoughts questions or anything you'd like to see a video on in the future if you would like to see content from you in the future make sure you subscribe and hit the notifications button again my name is robert i'm here to help with all of your remodeling needs and until next time happy remodeling and have a great day

Channel: Remodel With Robert

Views: 416,485

Keywords: Stair remodel, wood on stairs, vinyl plank on stairs, laminate on stairs, how to change your stairs, wood flooring on stairs, wood stairs, laminate stairs, wood floors, laminate floors, mohawk revwood, coretec vinyl, waterproof vinyl, stair design, wood stair nose, stair nose, stair nosing, wood stair nosing, Luxury Vinyl Stairs, Laminate stair nosing, waterproof vinyl on stairs, changing stairs from carpet to wood, redo stairs from carpet to wood, redo stairs

Id: ImruVU_Aj2g

Length: 15min 13sec (913 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 06 2021