Laminate over old wood - stairs challenge

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dannomite

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Nov 3, 2015
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Hi all, hopefully I can describe my scenario well enough to get some advice from the experts.

So I have an older house that had wood floors under carpet. I know a lot of people say just refinish old wood instead of putting laminate over top but there are a few reasons I decided to put laminate (mainly my German Shepherd). Anyways, the old floor is flat so there was not issue with that part.

I have a sidesplit house, so I have a large living room, with stairs up to a hallway that goes into 3 bedrooms. I have laid the laminate in the living room with no issue but I am stumped now with how to handle the stairs. I know a lot of articles recommend you just put laminate over the stairs, and use stair nosing. The problem I have, is my stairs are currently in really good shape (oak) so I sanded them and planned to stain to match the laminate. But because I am laying laminate at the top of the stairs, I am now thinking this might look weird. For one, the laminate plus the underpad is about a 1/2 inch, plus a little more rise from the stair nose when I get it. So that might make my top stair rise about 3/4 inch more than the rest of the stairs do. So I am afraid this might be awkward, and might look a bit funny to have the nosing on 1 stair only.

So then I went back to the idea of laminating all the stairs so this would look consistent. The problem with my existing stairs is they have a 2inch overhang. From what I understand 1 inch is the norm for an overhang. The 2 inch overhang makes the entire tread 11 inches which is the standard I think. So the problem here is I can't cut the 2 inch overhang off to make room for laminate treads and risers because the new nosing won't make up those 2 inches... so im stuck scratching my head on how to handle these stairs, without having to rip anything out.

Any ideas?
 
Thanks for the replies, so do you think it would look odd if the top step had a laminate nosing and the rest didnt? Also the top step being 1/2 - 3/4 " higher than the rest?
 

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