Cladding A Staircase With Engineered Wood Flooring

Wooden staircases are an extremely popular and stylish option at this moment in time.  With more and more people choosing wooden flooring for the main rooms in their home, these same people often look to extend this interior styling to their staircases.

If you’re building a brand new home from scratch, you may well have opted for a solid or an engineered wooden staircase to be installed and have allowed for this in the design and planning.  That said, if you live in an older property, your only option, if you want a solid or engineered wooden staircase may well be to clad your current staircase.

Cladding is the term used to describe the process whereby an existing structure is covered with a new material to create a whole new look without changing the original form or construction.  Often used to describe the process of applying a new “covering” to a roof or walls, it is a term also used in flooring.  In this case, it involves the application of engineered wood flooring to an existing or original staircase to give it a whole new look.

If you choose to clad your staircase with engineered board, the end result will look exactly the same as if you select solid wood board, but with one exception.  Because engineered boards can’t be manipulated in the same way as solid wood to create the edge, or “nose” of each step, you’ll need to install an engineered wood “nose” on each step.

A nose is essentially fitted at the front of each step to create a neat join between the tread and the riser creating a pleasing and stable finish.  In order to make way for your new engineered wood floor nosing, the existing nosing on your original staircase will need to be removed.  The removal of the existing nosing will enable the neat and stable fitting of your engineered wood nosing.

One important thing to remember if you’re planning to clad your staircase with engineered boards is that the boards need to be glued to your original staircase.  Although there are several ways of fitting engineered boards in other rooms (including nailing, floating and stapling for example), for stairs, it is essential that you glue your boards to the existing stairs to achieve the rigidity and stability required.  Only by doing so can you be sure that your new stairs will stand the test of time and more importantly be safe.