Comprised of three simple, triangular forms, this minimalist Vermont house is infused with character and culture. Even with paint on them, I'm not sure how well they'll take the daily abuse of being walked on. Quarter round trim is an option instead of using trim or a skirt to finish your stairs. 2. Flooring - Should a skirt board on a stair case be installed over the treads Skirt boards are one of the hardest things in my opinion to do. Types of Floor Trusses: Each Type Explained, Finishing Basement Without Permit [Possible Risks], Floor Joist Drying Techniques: Best Solutions, Joists vs Beams vs Girders: Differences Explained, How Many Steps in a Flight of Stairs? The point I was trying to make is that most of the time I do stairs, the skirt boards are already there. This is useful if you need a narrower width for your skirting, such as 5/8 or 1/2. This will allow for more accurate measurement when installing the skirting board. But this is your project and your home you will have to be the judge, we don't know what your talents as far as painting and staining are. Conclusion Ways to Fix a Gap Between Stair Tread and Wall Method 1. You should leave them a littleloose, and not glued. Compress the trigger and begin pulling the gun slowly backward along the joint, creating a thin, smooth line of caulk. The solution is to get it from your local lumber yard where they'll most likely be able to get very long boards for you. Your stating radial and tangential directional concerns. Alright Bob, you got me. Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests. This is a dialog window which overlays the main content of the page. Does anyone have any advice or suggestions on how to do this the best? Another issue is that stores often do not have MDF boards of the width you need for a skirt board so they are usually pre-ordered. Heres How to Choose the Right Runner for You, 12 Fresh Alternatives to the Carpeted Staircase. and what have you invested into the whole project. There are several instances when stair skirt boards just dont make sense. Personally,I go the old school way when building stairs with one or both sides closed. Shaddy has also worked as a newspaper reporter and writer, and as a contributing writer for Bicycling Magazine. You can also use Anvil Talon grip which is anti-skid additive for stain and transparent sealers, etc That being said, you should use a sanding sealer before you apply any stain finishes to pine. Risers are fast and simple because they are covered by skirts. Ways to Fix a Gap Between Stair Tread and Wall Method 1. Generally, baseboard trims for the stairs have the same style as the rest of the baseboard trims used in the lower and upper floors. MDF and softwood are ideal for painting, while hardwood can be finished to match hardwood stair treads. Now she's looking closer and has noticed that some of the treads have slight gaps while others do not. Cut the bottom line using a circular saw. I see now. Stack Exchange network consists of 181 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. and what should be expected as "normal". I use my 10" Hitachi compound slider. The skirt boards were notched around the stairs at some point leaving 1/4"-1/2" gaps. Problems occur due to complex angles, pieces that are not cut perfectly square or pieces that need angles cut on them. The risers should be the same color as all the trim. He wasn't a big fan of caulking as a solution nor was he about to start ripping out treads for 1/16" gaps. btw I forgot to mention the $1,500 savings was just on the staicases. The length depends on how long the staircase is, and the thickness also depends on your existing baseboard thickness but never less than 5/8. I am passionate about woodworking, general DIY and home improvement. Step 7 Diagram Step 7 Instructions I use my 10" Hitachi compound slider. I think my wife will forget about it with some time. - M.K. Not wood flooring swelling and shrinking in the widths. Guaranteed Asset Protection (GAP) Insurance covers your vehicle for its full value over a longer period of time (e.g. I'll have to use stainable/paintable filler because I was planning on staining the treads and painting the risers white. Some may disapprove of the busy look it creates, although if you have plain baseboard trim, it may not stand out as much as a decorative trim. You'll also have problems with the skirt boards if you're not careful. south glens falls school tax bills mozart: violin concerto 4 analysis mozart: violin concerto 4 analysis NOFMA Technical Information Publication "Gaps between strips in Hardwood Floors" states: Ray, he is talking about stair treads with gaps on the end cut next to the skirting. For example, 40 psf load on a 16-inch (406 mm) span would be expressed as "16/40" on the label. I am snug where the nose meets the skirt, end up having 1/8" to 1/4" gap as you approach the riser. The most common reason why skirt boards are installed is simply aesthetics. Vinyl strips are a simple and a purely decorative option when you want to trim your stairs. Install 10 x 1 vertical siding boards from top of water board drip flashing to top of wall spaced ~ 1 apart. This covers the top gap for rainscreen ventilation . Step 3. Measure the two angles for making the plumb cuts using a digital level or digital protractor after marking. Can you further explain the grandfathered clause? Use a heavy floor paint or polyurethane to protect them. But what are you supposed to say? If you have any other stair skirting alternatives or differing versions about how to install a stair skirt, then Id love to hear them. They're extremely cheap, and are easy on the eyes. If the gap is more than 1/4 inch or you just want a more substantial look, move up to 1/2- by 1/2-inch, or even 3/4- by 3/4-inch. 01-05-2006, 11:07 PM. Installing a stair skirt board before the stairs are installed is the recommended method for installation. That means you dont want to mess it up because youll be seeing the flaws in your work for many years to come, along with anyone else who spends time in your house. Skirt boards are mostly installed after the stringers are constructed. Youll need a router or have a steady hand with a coping saw to make it look nice. The rough treads under the carpets were 2x10 pine. After that the scribing is just a straight-edge set against the face of the riser and a line drawn parallel from the top of the tread with a scrap of wood. Each deck board and stair tread, similar to pressure/preservative-treated wood, is required to have a label. Stair Skirtboard Choices and Alternatives [Pros Cons]. The current skirt board was installed before the treads, so the treads butt up against the skirt board. All you have to do is squash the tape into the gap with a stripping knife. I wondered if there was a better option and realized that while completing a set of stairs on your own is challenging, dressing them up and making them look finished with a stair skirt board is much easier. I'd then attach a quarter round or other trim so it is setting on the tread, but nailed to the skirt, to hide any gap. Given the rough treads were only 9 inches with no overhang, I'm assuming the new treads being a little more than an inch deeper is a good thing, but wanted to double check before I start gluing/screwing them in. While there are several ways to install stair skirt boards and the exact steps depend on the conditions under which you are building, I intend to give a general overview of stair skirt board installation here. This meant that I could rip 1/2 inch off the inside of the end pieces to make the tread fit over the skirt boards. Because you dont have to cut a piece of skirting around stair nosing and multiple rises and runs. Cut a piece of carpeting with shears to fit the stair tread exactly. You can install your stairs first, then put the skirt board on after. If you opt for no skirting, you run the risk of an awkward transition between your existing home baseboard trim on either end of the stairs. To make stairs less slippery you can add clear opaque non-slip adhesive stair treads. It might be less than 1/16 inch, up to 1/4 inch or. There are situations where a stair is curved or spirals. Cut the bottom of your skirt board to achieve the desired look and height, depending on how you want to transition your trim from the skirting board to the landing. His man is getting paid for this, if the homeowner did it I would not have made that comment. DIY Fun or Hire Someone? If you do not plan to paint your board and want it to match your hardwood treads, then youll have to contact a local lumberyard. gap between tread and skirt board. For the tread length, my concern was if the treads fit to tightly against the skirts, there could be movement when stepped on causing squeeks. Thanks and should/can anything be done? Start your subscription today and save up to 70%. Press the tip of the tube against the joint at one end of the first stair where it meets the wall, at the highest point where it meets the wall. He showed up at 6:30 pm and the original plan was to put on the first coat of finish that night but they hadn't gotten 4 steps completed on the main entry steps and they still had the smaller sized steps to go. The skirt board bows out for some 3-4 steps in the run, following the countour of the wall. Hardwood Floor Inspections. After plasterboarding and skimming the wall to be flush with the door frame, there will be a 10mm gap between the wall and the staircase. The current treads show an ugly gap between the end of the tread and the existing skirt board. If you use stainable filler, tape the edges of any adjacent wood you want to stain, because any smudges of filler that get onto the wood will show, even after sanding, and it takes the stain differently than the surrounding wood. I wouldn't be caught without a box of good shims if going over existing stringers. Steps to Install Skirt Board How can I place treads on these stairs around a corner? Summary. go under the stairs and shim the stringers in, to close the stair carriage. I told him don't worry about it as I wasn't bothered by 1/16" gaps. This is primarily because tread and riser fixing is the most critical step that could possibly go wrong when building wooden stairs. GameStop Moderna Pfizer Johnson & Johnson AstraZeneca Walgreens Best Buy Novavax SpaceX Tesla. MDF is easy to cut and is widely available at most big box home reno stores. (Answered), For getting great DIY projects in your mail. Should a skirt board on a stair case be installed over the treads? Well you basically cut your tread width to the point where you have to gently hammer them home (maybe 1/16 inch long). Should these have some sort of metal edge? This choice gives you the benefits of using wood without being as expensive as hardwoods. The stairs are 11 steps into our basement, but not concealed behind a door and are in the front of the house right near the front door, so I want them to look nice. rev2023.3.3.43278. You can go with no skirting at all. View attachment 278543. Install carpeting on stairs to hide small gaps between the tread and stringer or riser. I had my stairs professionally done but I watched the carpenter so I'll mentioned what I observed. You can also run your baseboard trim over the skirt, which will create a nice, finished look if both the trim and skirt are the same thickness. I'm Susan. In this article, we take a deep dive into everything you need to know about stair skirt boards. My installer is not a big fan of caulking and for now I'm going to do nothing. Cove gives the tread and risers a finished look that can't be obtained with other moldings, mostly due to a shadow line down the center, or a reflecting quality. They are not the easiest things to build, particularly if the treads and risers are solid hardwood. Honey. Ray, study your wood sciience notes about swell and shrink in longitudinal direction. You may be looking at sub-treads, like a sub-floor; these are often made of plywood and they're not great for walking on directly. Stairs built like this look wonderful, but it's a lot of extra work. If you get something like construction adhesive on things make sure you have mineral spirits in a spray bottle or ketchup bottle and that same brushto wipe and scrub the stuff out of the pores. MDF is also difficult to repair in case of damage, as it cannot be sanded or refinished. Learn more about affordable, modern floating stairs, from design to manufacturing to installation. And once you do find one, expect to pay a pretty penny for it. The lopsided car with two busted tyres was filmed from a vehicle behind as it rolled along on its rims down a major road in Coomera on the Gold Coast last weekend. 1/16" isnt that bad. How to show that an expression of a finite type must be one of the finitely many possible values? So we shimmed between the skirt and the stair stringer, Treads and risers will cover everything up. If you have nice, finished hardwood treads, for example, you may be able to get away with no trim if there isnt a discernible gap between the stairs and the wall. Skirt boards are one of those things How to Install Stair Skirt Boards: Tricks, Finding Angles, Cutting, Transitions Insider Carpentry - Spencer Lewis 199K subscribers Join Subscribe 8.7K. This gap is usually either 3/4" or 1/2" in width. Typical stair skirtboard size is 9-1/2 wide and a minimum of 5/8 thick. Rather than using your regular baseboard trim around each stair, it is easier to run a single piece of material diagonal along the length of the stairs. Post subject: Re: gaps between solid treads & skirt boards. Walkout Basement Explained: Pros and Cons. JavaScript is disabled. Can you attach some photos showing the area in concern? Question, how much gap width is too much? There's also no way to repair PVC skirtboards if they break. Is there a better way? Your wife has good reason to be bothered by that gap. Of course it could have been better too. They are available as peel and stick products and are sold by length. Skirt boards give a finished neat appearance to stairs. Looks like the corner is starting to chip. 215 Year Old House - Wide Board Attic Refinishing, What can I do with this weird 2 ft cantilever, Politique d'Utilisation des Cookies de Houzz. Stair skirt board material should be " to " MDF, hardwood, or softwood. The steps are split-entry style and skirtboards butt up to . It was clear to me that they got behind and I did'nt feel good about it. Aug 25, 2008 I installed 1" red oak staircase. I would have said looks good. Home Decor Bliss: How To Fix The Gap Between Stairs And Walls. there is a poor bond with end grain and as said by others, it would create a messy situation that will result in a less than acceptable finish on treads.Prefinishing treads works great. My plan of attack was to shim between the treads and stringers to ensure that they were well-supported. Skirt boards look best when they are in one single piece, unspliced. June 22, 2022; Posted by . Make a horizontal line from the top of the bottom tread across your skirt then remove the skirt from the wall. We've added a "Necessary cookies only" option to the cookie consent popup. Also your skirt doesn't have to be perfect. So from this distance, use a level to mark a straight line vertically near the bottom end of the skirt board. Make the cuts using a circular saw and guide. One of the benefits of plywood for stair skirting is that you can purchase birch, oak, or maple plywood and stain it instead of painting. I will also planon shimming the risers up so they meet the bottom of each tread evenly (glue and finish nail in place) thanI will also screw the risers into the back of the tread below. Fine Homebuilding has some good articles on this; it's typically known as "housed stairs". I would never guarantee that the stairs wouldn't squeek-. There are two kinds of skirt boards for stairs. Shimming behind the skirt board doesn't solve the problem. Start by checking underneath the tread to see if there's a scotia molding bridging the tread with the riser. The treads will expand in width with seasonal moisture changes, but very little in length. Hey, We saved over $1,500. When you add a shiny finish, small problems jump out or compound themselves, growing bigger as you progress with each step of the installation. This means it's perfect for use even in damp conditions such as in basements. The most popular hardwoods used for skirtboards are oak, cherry, and walnut but you need to match the wood of your stairs to that of the skirt board. Your treads are particle board or fiberboard, both of which are fairly soft. When installed on the inside, i.e. And, then pulling it out after the treads are in place. Originally I thought about trying to pull the skirt board back to be tight with the treads and risers but I am thinking that might be hard/impossible without major work. The current treads show an ugly gap between the end of the tread and the existing skirt board. Most large home reno stores will have MDF, hardwood, and other types of softwood with thicknesses of and greater in stock of common lengths i.e.8, 10, or 12. Fascia boards use 95% recycled plastic film and reclaimed sawdust, and is backed by our 25-, 35-, and 50-year . In case of damage, hardwood skirting can easily be fixed by sanding or replacing at the damaged location. Could you clear things up? Can I tell police to wait and call a lawyer when served with a search warrant? This will give me slightly more than 10 inches of depth. I did not scribe the steps, they were straight cut. Find out if that's the case before making any more decisions about your project -- you want to know if you have finished wood treads suitable for walking on there, or if you need to add treads as you remove carpet. First, youll have to precisely measure the rise, run and stair nosing cuts for each stair. Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2007 5:19 pm . I think the main problem here now that things are finished is that my installer simply "overbooked" himself. Tack the skirt board into place. If it's not perfect, it shows. If you'd like to connect with me or talk about something you like at mellowpine, drop me a mail at susan@mellowpine.com, Engineered Floor Joists vs 2x10 Lumber: Compared. A good solution in such a case is to use a flexible material like vinyl or PVC as the skirt board. If the treads are open (visible) on one side, with the balusters resting in pairs on each step, then the gap is zero at the front, but wider as you approach the front of the next step, so the gap runs horizontally? I agree with FreeMan about them being less durable. These lines will mark the vertical cuts for the skirt-to-baseboard transitions. A stair tread jig (which you can make) will copy the distance and the quirks of the opening between the skirtboards. A stair skirt board is an unbroken piece of trim for your stairs. Look at any grandfather clock and you'll recognize the familiar shape of cove molding on the base and around the hood at the top. Partner is not responding when their writing is needed in European project application, Minimising the environmental effects of my dyson brain, Styling contours by colour and by line thickness in QGIS, Euler: A baby on his lap, a cat on his back thats how he wrote his immortal works (origin?). You'll want to look at something that's specifically designed for floors, or something that you can add some fine sand or grit to in order to give traction. Thanks for all the great responses. This type of skirting is also called vinyl trim. Should painted stair treads be stripped before repainting? If you want to pursue this, it's typically done with a router and a template. If there's some deviation between the skirt board and the drywall, you can run a basecap along the top of the skirt . Become a member and get instant access to thousands of videos, how-tos, tool reviews, and design features. If the gap is too wide, use a strip or piece of the same flooring material; or use a thicker skirting board. The current skirt board was installed before the treads, so the treads butt up against the skirt board. The Fora platform includes forum software by XenForo. It also has a 90-degree back. While they don't offer any protection to your wall, they come in a variety of designs. Sometimes you got to educate people ---even if it's your own spouse!! Cove molding also comes in different sizes, but the most widely used is 3/4- by 3/4-inch. 2. Is this good? Place the skirt against the wall, with the cut end flush against the floor. Ask an Architect: How Can I Carve Out a New Room Without Adding On? Finally, a stair skirt board shouldnt be confused with a stair apron they are not the same. IMO if you want a tight-looking fit, make housed stringers. If it's water based keep a bucket of clean water, clean rags and a scrub brush right there and clean it up before it dries. A skirt board on your stairs is a long, unbroken piece of trim just for your stairs. What Gary said about existing skirtboards is exactly right, they're never square and a real pain to deal with installers just do the best they can when dealing with somebody else's work. So what would be considered "touching" them in a way that would break the exemption? Can I meet this goal by installing the skirt board over the installed stair treads? Why? The new oak treads and risers will fit between both of the finished skirt boards (butt up to them on either end). To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. I only brought up the "tread end gaps" because my wife was abit overboard about it. Share Improve this answer Nevertheless, all things considered it was "pretty good". You also need to make sure the paint job is perfectly done. I intended on staining the stairs. In that way, you can match the finish of certain stair treads to achieve a different look. I really don't like to see him not show up the second day but rather drop off his rt.