Hey Everyone,

I recently tore up the carpet on the stairs and replaced it with engineered hard wood floors to match the living room floor.

I purchased the matching stair nose planks and connected to regular flooring planks to cover the stair tread. For each stair I used Loctite glue, and then nailed down the stair nose using some finishing nails.

My issue is that as people use the stairs, they might inadvertently put too much weight on the nose plank, which is breaking the hardened glue. Although the nose plank is still fastened by nails, you can feel some movement.

I have been using Loctite Heavy Duty adhesive. Is there a better adhesive I should be using, or do I really need to just smother the tread with glue to ensure adhesion?

I guess I could always post a sign saying to "tread lightly" as well.

Any thoughts on how to better adhere the stair nose?

Thanks

 

If you have scrap nosing left over, I would pull some plugs and drill and countersink deck screws into the framing (if stringers are available). Then glue in the plugs to blend. That in addition to using liquid nails for subfloor (is will spell out subfloor in big letters). Most adhesives are not rated for use in flooring applications. Read your Loctite label to see if this is true for what you used.

What type of material was the tread made of? It wasn't MDF was it?

 

Probably too late now but it would have been better to buy/install traditional stair treads and stain/finish them to match the engineered flooring.

btw - welcome to the forums!

 

Thanks for the replies! Yes unfortunately it is too late to use treads, but I'm convinced that there is a way to make this work.

The nose is made of high density fiberboard, I will look at the Liquid Nails adhesive, at this point it's worth a shot.

Plugging is also a good idea... I didn't think of that, but that would really secure the nose plank.

Sounds like I got some work to do.

And thanks for the forum welcome,... fortunately or (unfortunately) I have a lot of projects to do, so I will probably becoming quite an active member.

 

Screws are a very bad idea.
In order to be able to insert a plug and have it stay in place there would not be any material left under the screw head.
MDF has 0 holding power.
Someone's going to get hurt at some point if this is not all removed and replaced with real wood treads.