LVP on Stairs... In preparation...

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Deeber

Member
Joined
Apr 21, 2021
Messages
15
Location
Toronto
I am putting down 8mm thick, cork backed Fuzion LVP in my basement. I also want to finish the stairs. I am looking for advice on what should be done with these stairs prior to LVP. The stairs are 4 down to a landing, turn right and down another 5 or so with small landing at bottom. The first four stairs from upstairs are concerning as once I removed old carpeting, there were multiple layers of vinyl, some of which I have not removed as not sure what they are made of in regards to asbestos. The stairs, hence, are not flat with old adhesive, flooring and tend to slope downwards and are 9.5 inches deep on the tread so I'm wondering what advice there could be to get these ready to be covered with LVP. Ideally, I wish the tread could be wider and not sloping downwards but not sure if this is possible without rebuilding. I'm not sure they could be rebuilt without tearing up basement underneath which was just recently finished but perhaps there are options from above. I am including a number of pics to give a better picture including both the top concerning stairs and the below ones which appear to be in better condition obviously rebuilt in the past. Thanks in advance.
 

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I had a set upstairs to do many years ago. They were done with one piece stair treads. That's one solid piece of heavy gauge vinyl flooring that begins at the bullnose and goes all the way up under the riser on the next step up.
I did something strange, once. 😁
It worked out quite well. With my stair project, the stairs tipped forward instead of being flat, just like yours. I don't recall the thickness but it might have been 1/4 in difference in level from the back of the step to the front of the step. Maybe it was an eighth of an inch I don't remember.
Let's say it was 1/4 of an inch.
I placed a 1-inch wide strip of 1/4 inch plywood across the leading edge of the step.
I then floated a cement based floor filler to fill in the gap between the plywood I installed on the front of the step to the back of the step. It most likely took two screeds of filler across the step to get it flat.
That was probably in the mid 1990s. Never got a complaint from it.
I probably used a couple of thin beads of construction adhesive to hold the strip of plywood on the stair edge, then added some short nails or staples.
The only other option I see is disassembling the step and reshaping the stringers so they are level once again. That's going to get pretty involved. I've done that before and it takes a lot of patience, because you have to figure out how much to notch out each stringer to make it level but then you also need to make the right left and middle stringers flat with each other. Same with the front of the stringers. it just depends on your skill level and your patience. You also want the stairs to end up exactly the same height from one another. That means you need to decide if the correct fix on each step is whether you need to notch out the back of the stringer or shim up the front side of the stringer. Let's say on one step you need to shim up the center of the stringer to make it level. Now you need to put your level across the face of the step and make the side stringers flat. I can be very time consuming if the stairs are way out of whack.
Depending on the construction of your stairs, the shim method I first mentioned might work okay for you.
 
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Thanks. This is helpful. I was thinking along similar lines in regards to fixing the slant. I am also concerned about the depth, though. I have read that I also have to cut off the the front of the step to make flush in preparation for the LVP bull nose which will remove another inch or so from the depth once cut off. I assume the LVP bull nose will add some back, however. I assume the only way to add some depth would be to start messing with the stringers which might be crazy complicated...
 
It gets complicated and it takes a tremendous amount of patience and measuring. I was asked to do a set of oak treads on a stairway in a home that had a new upstairs built on it.
The temporary stairs were two 2x6s. I needed to remove those and install two sheets of 3/4 inch plywood on each step before adding the treads.
The stringers were installed green, meaning they were not dry when The notches were cut in them. Overtime as these stringers shrunk the outermost part of the stringer, which is the stair edge, shunk much more than the interior part of the stringer which was closer to the heart of the tree. There were three stringers and each one shrunk differently
I had to figure out which one to use as my starting point on every step. Measuring from the landing to the room above meant that the stairs needed to be exactly 8 inches tall. When figuring which of the 3 stringers needed correcting, I needed to factor in that I needed to end up with exactly and 8 in height difference. Mine was probably an extreme case. I've never installed stair treads before so I went way overboard to make sure I had flawlessly flat surfaces upon which to install the treads and risers.
The job that I mentioned earlier
It's coming back to me more clearly now. I was able, after flattening those stairs with a method I described, to cap each stair tread with one quarter inch plywood. Because of the construction of the stairs going into the basement, this still made the stair height meet our local codes.
 
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You’re going to need a quality installer to make those stairs look good. Just because they can lay the floor doesn’t necessarily mean they can lay those stairs. Might be worth it to have a carpenter come in and redo the treads and that landing to at least give the installer a fighting chance at making those stairs look good.
 
The lvp, at least on most of the products I've seen, doesn't have much of a lip. Not like the nose that you see on a set of finished wooden steps.
I was asked to do a set of stairs and pergo many moons ago. Instead of removing the nose, the guy at the shop that sold the job had ordered formica nearly the same color and had me face the original nose with formica before adding the overlapping pergo bullnose.
It left a double nose profile, and it didn't look all that bad.
I like the lower part of the stairs better than the uppers. That's not going to be the easiest set upstairs to do, especially the lowers having exposed edges and the upper part needing a lot of work to get it in good working condition to receive the flooring. It's hard to tell with what looks to be a lot of paint overspray.
 
I’m not a fan of cutting the nose off of your structural stairs. I prefer to build the face of the stair out. You’re going to lose at least 1” to 1.5” of tread depth that you will not gain back with the LVP. And when you want to redo your stairs down the road, that stair nose is forever gone. That could be a problem for some. Another thing is you mentioned the possible A monster, asbestos. That right there would prevent me from legally removing anything anyway (cutting the nose off) since I’m not set up for abatement.

Your treads are currently 2x10? Those are easy enough to pull off and put some new ones on. Fresh, clean, flat treads for your new LVP to lay on. I would also rip those planks off of your landing and go back with the comparable thickness of plywood. Again, fresh, clean and flat. LVP will simply cap what you currently have. Every thing you do now sets the next step in the installation process of those stairs up for success.
 

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