staircase in hardwood – boral slimwood – laminate  

STAIRS

square-round-or with nosing

Generally there are two different staircase designs possible in building your dream home hardwood stairs.

1) The first would be sharp edges form where the risers and treads meet. This would create a modern and present-day look.

2 the second option would be building a small 1-3 cm riser overlaps otherwise called nosing. These would create a more European classical look.

Dress your old staircase in hardwood

Our company is providing dressing of wood or concrete staircases. Dressing means basically staircase makeover, covering with timber. When selecting wood, it is first of all necessary to assess its colour to fit the interior. Furthermore, the cost of the material where there can be huge differences between different types of wood.

And wood hardness. Because of the considerable traffic on a staircase our recommendation is to use hardwood. Stairs are the element on which a person walks differently than on the floor. Stairs are strained and abraded much faster than a normal level floor.

There are three products suitable which we can help to build your dream new stairs with. Solid timber slabs, solid strip flooring, and floating floors.

Solid timber  slabs

1) using solid timber slabs for treads and risers. We are using 18 mm thick timber slab for the stair risers ( the vertical parts of the step) and 32mm for the stair treads ( the horizontal piece) timber slab. The timber slab is attached directly to the concrete using a trawled urethane adhesive There are thicker sizes materials available. Of course they are more expensive.

Australia has a number of unique hardwoods that are fantastic for use in making timber stairs. The following timber species Blackbutt, Spotted gum, Jarrah, Ironwood and Brushbox belong to Sydney’s most popular.

T&G flooring

2) The second option is using solid Australian hardwood tongue and groove flooring. The risers and treads must be aligned at right angles first. Then a sheet of plywood is Dynabolted to the concrete. A new platform is ready for strip flooring to be nailed and glued on the top of it. Sanding and polishing of the new timber staircase removes all imperfections. Three coats of anti slip coating is recommended.

3) The last option is using a floating floor which is glued to the concrete or timber staircase with a direct stick. ( polyurethane adhesive directly applied to the concrete and floating floor board). This category represents two types of material.

Engineered floating floor

a) Engineered timber flooring which is usually 15 to 19 mm thick and in some cases the manufacturer is providing matching nosing. The part of the wood which overhangs the edge of the step. Before choosing the desired flooring make sure the matching nosing is available. The reputable engineered floating floor manufacturers including Boral or Premium floors (  boral slimwood flooring ) have an amazing range of premium quality and design floors.

Laminate flooring

b) The last material eligible for dressing concrete and timber staircases is laminate floating floor. Because the thickness of the material is usually only between 8 and 12 mm, the nosing is not implemented. The new staircase flooring would be too thin and get easily snapped off or damaged

A separate chapter in the processing of wooden stairs is the sanding and polishing of old original wooden stairs. It is hard laborious manual labour. It’s a lot of dust and toil. Each step must be carefully sanded one by one.

The Floorexperts director Karl recalls his beginnings in Wiesbaden, Germany in 1989. He says :

“The attention to every corner, a nail hole, a small imperfection makes this difficult job a great job.

About 12 people worked in our company. We often sanded the old wooden stairs that led up to the sixth – seventh floor. Every time the boss told us, boys , we are starting a new job tomorrow we would sand the stairs, you could be sure that half of the team remained sick at home. No one wanted to do this hard and laborious job.”

Not all staircases are the same and not all woods are of the same quality and appearance. It is often necessary to change the colour of the wood and adapt the freshly sanded stairs to the color of the furniture or the environment.

Some softwoods are very difficult to sand and lacquer. The previous paint has penetrated too deep into the wood and cannot be removed 100%. In case of incomplete grinding of all previous coatings, the new paint after drying will show a lot of blemishes and defects. In that case the only solution remains to paint the stairs with a paint.