THE LONG AWAITED STAIR TREAD ~ alias the bull nose

As you may know, we’ve been working on installing hardwood floors in the upstairs hallway.

You can read about Part One.

You can read about Part Two.

You can read about Part Three.

We’ve been waiting for the bull nose to add to the top step for a smooth transition from the carpeted stairs to the wood floors.

In my research, I found this great diagram for all the terms that I think I’ve been misusing.

Source

So, today we are replacing the stair nosing for the top step.

This is what the nosing looked like when it arrived (a couple of weeks late!).

We first had to remove the yucky carpet.

Notice the piece of wood that the LOML nailed to the landing to use as a guide for the circular saw to cut the old nosing off.

The LOML measured and cut the new nosing to fit the space.

I had to cut out a small hole for a perfect fit.

The next step was to finish all the wood floors on the landing now that we knew exactly how the nosing would fit.

We drew a line where the nosing would end.

One of the hardest parts of this job was cutting enough space under the sill (the white part) so that the wood floor would slide under.

Another difficult job on this project was installing the last 2½” of flooring. We had to attach it to the previous row and tuck it under the sill at the same time. The LOML is the king of improvising!

First we removed the second row from the end, then shaved off the locking piece of the adjacent row so we would be able to slide the piece we removed back into place without locking. We used glue liberally on all these pieces. We placed the skinny row under the sill. The LOML then banged the second to last row into place with a hammer and block of wood. I’m sorry it sounds so confusing. Hopefully, the picture will make it more clear.

Then we started on the bull nose stair piece. We used polyurethane adhesive (and we used a lot of it) on the nose piece and the subflooring. Then we taped the heck out of it.