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We might be wrong but unless you live in a bungalow then chances are that you have a solid wood floor in your lounge, perhaps in the reception hall. Maybe you’re just thinking about it and wondering what to do about the stairs.
At the planning stages for selecting the right wood floor, it can be difficult to vision the hallway with a wood floor installed, and running onto carpet on the staircase.
It breaks the flow of the floor, so instead you either settle for the carpet on the staircase, or carpet the entire reception hall.
You see the showrooms with the newly fitted, gleaming shiny wood staircases and think back to when your stair carpet was fitted and wonder how long ago it was since the wood looked like that.
Unless you’re planning a new custom build, where you’re in control of the planning and design of your new home, tailored to you… chances are you’re settling for the carpet. You may think that to get it looking like new boards again, you’d need to hire a surveyor, and an architect to rip out the old and install a new one.
The good news is that just the same as you can skim chipped walls with plaster, bringing them up like new, you can do the same with your staircase.
It’s called cladding and it just needs a nose
Cladding is just the term used for covering old surfaces with new. All the original architecture remains intact and is used to support a new surface.
You can use either solid wood flooring or engineered boards. If you want to shape the boards, such as rounding the edges, you will need to use solid boards. They can be machine worked to create a stunning round finish to each of them.
The design of engineered wood does not allow for much manipulation in the same way as solid wood floors, because of the design. They are made of a few layers of hardwood, a layer of MDF, or plywood, with the final top coating being hardwood.
Solid wood can be machine worked to create the rounded finish.
The term used for that is called a bullnose.
If you choose to use engineered board, you can still create the rounded effect, but you will not be able to manipulate the boards.
Instead, you would need to use unfinished stair nosing.
Whether you choose to clad your staircase with engineered wood flooring or solid wood flooring, you will be able to get a staircase that looks like new.
The only thing that needs changing on your original staircase is the nose.
That is what allows you to get the pristine neat finish, with a sturdy fitting. When the cladding is installed correctly, it will be difficult to tell that it is not an original floor.
It is important that the boards are glued to the original staircase and not installed using any other method. In all other rooms, a variety of installation methods can be used, such as nailing or floating the floor, but you cannot do that when you are cladding a staircase.
It needs to be firmly glued in place for both sturdiness and for safety reasons.
By cladding your staircase, you are able to bring continuity throughout your home.
