Can these wooden stairs be fixed?

[DecoDIY]

Hello everyone,
I'd like to hear your views on this matter, please.
The stairs are incredibly squeaky and in bad conditions. There are gaps between risers and treads, and the wood is worn. 3 treads have horizontal cracks.
Is it possibile to repair this staircase? If so, how can it be fixed?
Thank you
Have a nice day

 

[Bonni]

Yes, they can be fixed by getting under the staircase and hammering the wedges in further.

 

[DecoDIY]

Yes, they can be fixed by getting under the staircase and hammering the wedges in further.

Hi Bonni, thank you for your response.
I can access the underside of the stairs but the gaps are not visible there.

 

[johnny2007]

Take pictures from underside.
I have fixed staircases that had come totally loose, so yours is surely repairable.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

I can access the underside of the stairs but the gaps are not visible there.

They may not be visible, but you cannot effect any sort of repair from the front of the stairs.

Closed riser stairs, like yours, are held together with a large number of wedges and glue blocks, as the following illustrate:

If the wedges loosen they can be knocked out, coated in glue and knocked back in, one by one, going from bottom to top. This will tighten the treads. If the tread has moved back a little from the stringer (the recess for the nosing will be visible) a hammer and block of wood, usd from behind, wil reposition in. To repair cracks in the treads thin (4 to 6mm thick) plywood repair pieces which are the same size as the treads can be glued and screwed to the undersides of the treads where required.

You can remove the triangular glue blocks from the underside of the treads, clean up the undersides of the treads (glue doesn't adhere well to old glue), inject some glue into the grooves on the underside of the treads, and knock the treads back in, again one step at a time. Splits and cracks in the risers can be dealt with the same way as it is with the treads by "plating" the backs of the risers with thin (4 to 6mm thick) plywood repair pieces which are the same size as the risers. These need to be glued and screwed in place, but because the risers are often thin the screws may well come through and need to be removed once the glue has set (and the holes filled from the front). In bad cases it is possible to remove and replace complete risers. The risers are held in in the same way that the treads are, with a glued-in wedge at each end. After riser repairs have been completed the glue blocks can be replaced (and new ones added if any have gone missing). They get coated with glue on two faces and rub-joined (you press and rub the blocks side to sie a few millimetres and the glue eventually holds them without the need to pin or screw - works better with PVA glue, though). For speed consider using a D4 glue such as the Everbuild product sold by Toolstation. Plywood is the preferred material for repair work - MDF, chipboard and OSB all have problems in use

Because all the repair work needs to be done from beneath you should now understand why the underdrawings need to come off

Without going down to the office and digging out my C&G texts, this is about the clearest image I could find on the web to illustrate the construction method:

BTW, if looking for info about stairs on the web, try to ignore American web sites - they often use techniques which are simply not permitted in the UK and can really send the unwary down a misinformation rabbit hole

 

[DecoDIY]

Take pictures from underside.
I have fixed staircases that had come totally loose, so yours is surely repairable.

Here are the pictures, I hope they are good enough.

 

[DecoDIY]

They may not be visible, but you cannot effect any sort of repair from the front of the stairs.

Closed riser stairs, like yours, are held together with a large number of wedges and glue blocks, as the following illustrate:

View attachment 268970

View attachment 268971

If the wedges loosen they can be knocked out, coated in glue and knocked back in, one by one, going from bottom to top. This will tighten the treads. If the tread has moved back a little from the stringer (the recess for the nosing will be visible) a hammer and block of wood, usd from behind, wil reposition in. To repair cracks in the treads thin (4 to 6mm thick) plywood repair pieces which are the same size as the treads can be glued and screwed to the undersides of the treads where required.

You can remove the triangular glue blocks from the underside of the treads, clean up the undersides of the treads (glue doesn't adhere well to old glue), inject some glue into the grooves on the underside of the treads, and knock the treads back in, again one step at a time. Splits and cracks in the risers can be dealt with the same way as it is with the treads by "plating" the backs of the risers with thin (4 to 6mm thick) plywood repair pieces which are the same size as the risers. These need to be glued and screwed in place, but because the risers are often thin the screws may well come through and need to be removed once the glue has set (and the holes filled from the front). In bad cases it is possible to remove and replace complete risers. The risers are held in in the same way that the treads are, with a glued-in wedge at each end. After riser repairs have been completed the glue blocks can be replaced (and new ones added if any have gone missing). They get coated with glue on two faces and rub-joined (you press and rub the blocks side to sie a few millimetres and the glue eventually holds them without the need to pin or screw - works better with PVA glue, though). For speed consider using a D4 glue such as the Everbuild product sold by Toolstation. Plywood is the preferred material for repair work - MDF, chipboard and OSB all have problems in use

Because all the repair work needs to be done from beneath you should now understand why the underdrawings need to come off

Without going down to the office and digging out my C&G texts, this is about the clearest image I could find on the web to illustrate the construction method:

View attachment 268972

BTW, if looking for info about stairs on the web, try to ignore American web sites - they often use techniques which are simply not permitted in the UK and can really send the unwary down a misinformation rabbit hole

Thank you for your exhaustive reply. In this staircase there are no wedges, here attached you can find some pictures of the underside.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Oh dear, that looks like a Victorian bodge job! Your stair case looks like it was assembled by nailing it together. You sometimes see this on kite winder sections where the builder obviously wasn't a joiner and didn't know how to make-up that part of the stairs (even in Victorian days there were timber yards selling machine-made straight stair kits), but you rarely find an entire staircase done that way in my experience - and when you do they are generally unrepairable (in other words you'll struggle to get the squeaks out) and should be replaced when they start to fail. Without the traditional wedge and housing construction you have no way to adjust anything. So, sorry, but other than adding lots of screws and angle brackets there is little you can do to effect a repair

 

[DecoDIY]

Oh dear, that looks like a Victorian bodge job! Your stair case looks like it was assembled by nailing it together. You sometimes see this on kite winder sections where the builder obviously wasn't a joiner and didn't know how to make-up that part of the stairs (even in Victorian days there were timber yards selling machine-made straight stair kits), but you rarely find an entire staircase done that way in my experience - and when you do they are generally unrepairable (in other words you'll struggle to get the squeaks out) and should be replaced when they start to fail. Without the traditional wedge and housing construction you have no way to adjust anything. So, sorry, but other than adding lots of screws and angle brackets there is little you can do to effect a repair

Thank you very much for your honesty, the house is very old and who did the job certainly wasn't a professional.

 

[Bonni]

Thank you very much for your honesty, the house is very old and who did the job certainly wasn't a professional.

Well, I was speaking to a joinery manufacturing company a few weeks ago and they said stairs creek because they're made out of wood, so they make the risers and treads out of MDF.

You are going to have to glue wooden batons and screw them into place along the edges of the risers and treads under the staircase. Carpet fitters should fix gripper with screws on stairs as hammering the nails damages the stair joints.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Well, I was speaking to a joinery manufacturing company a few weeks ago and they said stairs creek because they're made out of wood, so they make the risers and treads out of MDF.

Another urban myth. I've heard this a few times from people outside of the trade - and it is complete and utter tosh! Movement and creaking is more down to component thickness and stiffness and load than material (in other words there are LOTS of MDF staircases out there that creak). The main reason they use MDF because it is dirt cheap in comparison to joinery grade softwood - so on MDF treads and risers they make a greater profit margin (incidentally, the trade has been using thin plywood risers since the 1940s). I bet the same guy wouldn't tell anyone that if they have a bath or shower overflow and run down the stairs there is a high probability that the entire stairs will have to be ripped out and replaced - because MDF is like blotting paper.

Properly kilned timber stairs of the correct thickness installed in a dry house won't creak because there is minimal shrinkage and movement, and if stairs ever did start to creak it is relatively easy to fix by resetting the wedges providing the stairs have been properly made in the first case. Solid wood will also withstand being used in semi-exposed environments. Which is maybe why we've been using it for stairs for several hundred years

 

[opps]

Carpet fitters should fix gripper with screws on stairs as hammering the nails damages the stair joints.

I have lost count of the number of stair cases that I have painted prior to the carpet runner being fitted where the carpet fitters used hammers to fix the gripper rods, even after I recommended the use of screws...