Interior Stairs and Attachment to Stringers...

[Greg Cuetara]

My current house is approximately 30+ years old. There is a stairway from the first floor to the second with red oak treads and pine risers which are stained to match. The stairs have some awful squeaks to them...especially when we are trying to sneak upstairs to go to bed at night and half the time it wakes up the kiddos which is not a good thing.

The underside of the stairs is sheet rocked over so no access to that as of right now.

I would like to try and take care of the squeaks if I can. My initial thoughts. i could use a nail set to push the nails through the existing treads to take them up, put down some construction adhesive and new fasteners. The second option would be to take down the rock on the underside of the stairs and try to fix it from below. I guess I could either use pocket screws to bring the treads tighter to the stringers if i were to do that.

Is there a preferred option here? I am also concerned that maybe there is too much deflection in the stringers which is causing the problem which would lead me to want to fix from below because then i could reinforce if i wanted to.

Thanks,
Greg

[Joseph Tarantino]

+1 for repair from below. if the stair structure is sound, the pocket screws could be used to pull treads towards the structure/stringers. if not sound, the structure could be repaired and then the treads additionally secured.

[Mel Fulks]

Fix from below. I've worked a couple of places that routinely made stairs . When you see how easy it is to prevent squeaks you will be angry at how much trouble it is to access and re- Sheetrock . My guess is you will see two or three small glue blocks at each nosing edge of tread and riser. Should be a long glue block all the way across or a number of small ones end to end.

[Michael Heffernan]

Greg, you can try these screws for eliminating the squeaks from above:
http://www.stopfloorsqueaks.com/
The head snaps off just below the the surface. You can fill the tiny hole with putty (Minwax pliable putty is a good choice).

[Sam Murdoch]

Greg, you can try these screws for eliminating the squeaks from above:
http://www.stopfloorsqueaks.com/
The head snaps off just below the the surface. You can fill the tiny hole with putty (Minwax pliable putty is a good choice).


I just watched this video. Seems like it should work :rolleyes:. Try them please Greg and give us a report :). These could save you hours of work and all with no mess.

[Mel Fulks]

Can't hurt to try those snap off things, would be a lot easier .Good luck, yeah ,if you try them please give us result.

[Jim Andrew]

One thing I have learned in trying to take oak parts out of houses, is if you drive the nails in with a nail set to where you can pry the board off, it will usually crack apart. Oak cracks bad anyway, and forcing a nail set down into it will agrivate the cracking.

[Dave Zellers]

Yeah, I gotta go with the fix from below group. Construction adhesive is your friend. Make a bunch of glue blocks the full length of the tread, butter up 2 sides, push them into place and shoot a couple nails into the stringer to hold it until the glue sets.

No need to over squeeze them into place. Construction adhesive is made to fill gaps.

Squeeks-b-gone.

[Greg Cuetara]

ok well thanks for all the thoughts. not sure that i really like the fixing from above as then i would have bigger nail holes to repair all over every tread. I am leaning more towards tearing out the sheetrock and trying to fix from below with construction adhesive and pocket screws.

thanks for all the thoughts.
Greg

[Jay Yoder]

I would do the fix from below, I actually once did this to discover that I didn't even have stringers, but just 2 2x4's nailed to the outsides with cardboard shims at the point. I put in 2 2x10 SYP customer stringers. Sturdy as a rock! I seem to have learned the hard way, initial ease does not equate to best solution. Just my .02

[Mel Fulks]

Before stairs were so often carpeted there was more reason for never putting any fasteners directly through the treads. The snap off things that have been reccommended break below the surface . Since they would not impede later work from underneath it's worth a try. Keep in mind ,when placing them that the risers are only 3/4 inch thick.

[Peter Quinn]

My logic is for an odd squeaky stair or floor board those break away screws are just the thing. You won't notice a few puddy holes on a whole stair case, and most people won't be looking for them anyway. But if its a poorly made stair system with lots of squeaks and structural issues, making the stairs into Swiss cheese is not the answer, better to rip down the ceiling and make the neccessary repairs.