Landing

Except for a few more coats of varathane - the landings are done!!  woohoo!  (Well at least the floor portions that is)

The upper landing went much better than the lower.  It was actually mounted the way it should be, and close to level.

 This picture (above) actually comes the closest to showing the true color.  It is very hard to take a pic of the stairs with out the flash because there is never enough natural light

It was quite the debate on what "flooring" to use on the landing.  I knew that I wanted the same bull nose on the landings as was on the treads.  We looked at unfinished red oak flooring.  The only store here that carries it calls it "rustic" grade.  Uhmm - I could think of another grade.  Ick!!  It was some yucky looking stuff.  And you had to buy it in wrapped bundles - as in you could not even actually see the ones you were buying.  We would have had to buy 2 bundles and have alot left over.  Assuming it was all usable, and by the looks of the samples, I would not really want to assume that. 

Then we ran into the issue that if I used a tread on the lip of the landings, there was nothing else we could find that was an inch thick.

So - I went back to Lowe's and bough 6 more treads.  We ripped the bull nose off of them and that became our flooring.  Honey and I measured and re-measured and then cut the treads to fit in the landing.  And I mean fit.  There is only 1/32 of an inch gap on the lower one between the treads and the baserail.  The upper one has a slightly larger gap, but will have basboards to cover it.  Woohoo!!! 

We used liquid nails to glue them to the plywood and carpenters glue to them to each other.  On the upper landing we screwed them in with decking screws on the 2 sides that will have the baseboards because the screws will be hidden.  On the lower level there will be no baseboards, so we used finishing nails and a punch and counter sunk them.  Then I covered those with putty. 

I did not have time to stain them before they were put in - I did not want to take advantage of honey's generous mood.  I would highly recommend that if you are ever doing stairs, stain everything before it goes in.  Youngest daughter has been playing hopscotch to avoid my working areas all weekend.  And it is much easier to have everything on the saw horses than to be curled and twisted to reach all the corners with out touching what you just stained.

But the results are great!! 

Happiness!!

Happy DIY'ing

Susan