Advice on attaching new wooden stair nosing

[Rosabee]

Hello,

Newly posting to this group and hoping for some advice/suggestions.

We are renovating a little stone arch house in the south of France. The current nosing from the stair treads has worn and they’re pretty hazardous! They are on top of the stair ledge, next to tiles. We have had new nosing made and are now struggling to attach them securely. The stairs seem to have bits of timber / cement / lime / all sorts in them, and are uneven.

We have tried various techniques including:
- making good the ledge for the nosing to sit on with cement
- drilling into the cement (& other materials) rear and hammering in a nail. We angle ground the other end of the nail to make a sharp point (effectively making a double ended nail). Then hammered the nosing onto the nail (to avoid seeing the nail on the tread). This wasn’t stable enough.
- also tried nailing through the wood into the cement (700mm masonary nails) which still isn’t stable enough.

Other things we’ve tried haven’t been effective. Now am pretty stumped with what to do. Issue is around fixing wood to cement on what are pretty rustic / wonky stairs. Have seen online cut nails and concrete nails but cannot find any locally. We’re getting to the end of our tethers with this and would value any input!

 

[Rosabee]

Hello,

Newly posting to this group and hoping for some advice/suggestions.

We are renovating a little stone arch house in the south of France. The current nosing from the stair treads has worn and they’re pretty hazardous! They are on top of the stair ledge, next to tiles. We have had new nosing made and are now struggling to attach them securely. The stairs seem to have bits of timber / cement / lime / all sorts in them, and are uneven.

We have tried various techniques including:
- making good the ledge for the nosing to sit on with cement
- drilling into the cement (& other materials) rear and hammering in a nail. We angle ground the other end of the nail to make a sharp point (effectively making a double ended nail). Then hammered the nosing onto the nail (to avoid seeing the nail on the tread). This wasn’t stable enough.
- also tried nailing through the wood into the cement (700mm masonary nails) which still isn’t stable enough.

Other things we’ve tried haven’t been effective. Now am pretty stumped with what to do. Issue is around fixing wood to cement on what are pretty rustic / wonky stairs. Have seen online cut nails and concrete nails but cannot find any locally. We’re getting to the end of our tethers with this and would value any input!

View attachment 11158

 

[Toby Newell]

Please send photos of ledge underneath nosing. Do not do anything percussive, masonary does not like shock loads.

Probably best off with adhesive.

If not you can try drilling and using chemical anchor instead of expanding bolt. Just counterbore and counter sink (search plug cutter) and fill with plugs.

Search 'Atlas concrete fixings' ideally you do not want to use expanding fixings near an edge and certainly no banging.

 

[Toby Newell]

adhesive is your best bet considering how bad the undrrneath is

 

[Toby Newell]

remember your house is only as strong as its foundations, if the supports are giving way you will need to remedy those first

 

[Toby Newell]

seal with PVA sealer then use a high performance MS / Modified Silane / Hybrid adhesive, this will give you the flex you need to take high point loads from walking (all weight on one foot)

 

[malcolm]

That looks like a fun system. How were they fixed originally? Looks like they were mortared into the stone both ends and sat on mortar. If the original system worked then doing much the same ought to work too. The edges would stop the wood bits from moving forward and the mortar at the bottom would take the vertical load.

Don't you all use lime in France rather than cement?

 

[Rosabee]

Thanks Toby & Malcolm for your responses.

We’ve already made errors as have used a hammer and chisel to chip away old loose material and a hammer for the nails! Will endeavour to be more gentle going forward.

What is the benefit of the sealant in addition to the adhesive?

I’m attaching a photo of the ledge, though this was before the final coating. I’ll try and take another photo tomorrow.

They were fixed initially with what look like long nails (perhaps traditional cut nails). Most of the stairs have render or stone on each side to secure it. This top one just had render on one side.

 

[Stevers]

It's a very odd way to make a staircase with the most wearable material on the nose of the stair. Also if there is worm, there has been damp, and that is unlikely to have suddenly gone away. Perhaps you're struggling with the repair because it's just a fundamentally wrong way to form a staircase. There even seem to be pieces of wood buried in what looks to be a very poor quality and therefore potentially unstable masonry base, one that wouldn't take much more than a hard stare to remove. Have you considered starting again using consistently either timber, or brick and tile?

The old 'putting lipstick on a pig' saying comes to mind - and pigs are amazing, but perhaps better not in your home - at least not the full size ones!

 

[Toby Newell]

I think intuitively people are minded to think that olde worlde is good and modern is bad. Unfortunately there were cowboys from way back, your stairs are fundamentally badly 'designed' (I think maybe generous) and badly executed.

If they are stable then adhesive does the least damage. Clean carefully with a brush and vacuum very dilligently with a soft brush upholstery attachment, apply a very thin diluted layer of PVA sealer to all mortar and unsealed quarry tiles (this improves adhesion) After 24hrs you can fix with adhesive.

MS / SMP / Hybrid = Silane Modified Polymer adhesive, you can get everywhere now, I have been using for 15 years although it's only become readily available in the last couple of years. This is light years ahead of the old solvent nased 'Gripfill' type adhesives, reason being it remains highly elastic which means it is less likely to fail under point load or expansion of the wood.

Nails = zero, unless into engineered concrete when you need a concrete nail gun.

Screwed fixings = sometimes ok, the self boring ones are best for medium loads, pilot drill then screw.

Expanded fixings = ok for engineered concrete, everything else likely to crack, esp brick and tiles. There are two types, the higher performing ones are v high load.

Chemical anchors = v high loads. Have to make sure hole is very clean.

For all screwed fixings you need to overbore 10-15% to allow for dust, still vacuum the holes.

Experiment, try the adhesive first then only used screwed fixings if needed.

Just try not and use the hammer action if not necessary and do not use expandable fixings, plugs are very old technology.

 

[Cubist]

Have you ever seen that tv advertisement for a well known brand of wallpaper adhesive in which a man in a white boiler suit is glued to a board with said product and then hoisted into the air on a rope from a helicopter?

I mention this en passant, so to speak, as I am sometimes accused of being too pessimistic in terms of my inputs to such discussions; though I would consider those contributions to be based on safe and reasonable assumptions. In this case, and having been faced with almost identical challenges concerning failed/lost stair nosings in the past, my decisions in those cases were based on my attitude to the risks involved and who I may ultimately expose to those risks. Meaning; I may be perfectly happy to be wearing the white boiler suit in the ad mentioned above but certainly not if it were my daughter or granddaughter!

In isolation there is nothing technically wrong with any of the approaches suggested to fix your new nosings in place. Some are clearly better than others and the worst... you have already seen fail. Had the treads of the stairs been all wood and the damage limited to the nosings alone I may have recommended that you remove the treads, cut off any damage from the leading edge, re-shape its profile, and re-lay them with a fillet of matching timber behind the trailing edge to push the nose forward to where it is needed. Clearly that approach will not work for you insofar that the stair structure/carcass seems to have been constructed of masonry, perhaps stone, and the riser/tread faces finished with quarry tiles.

To be brutal, and while I thoroughly appreciate your desire to keep your renovations in character and sympathetic to the original, I feel that your best approach would be to investigate whether the base stair structure is sound and is capable of withstanding the rigours and stresses involved in the installation of suitable fixings. Or, in the event that you may wish to go down the adhesives route, that the exposed face to which you may glue the nosings is capable of sustaining the bond under pressure. (An example to illustrate what I mean here - put a dab of NoNails on a similar surface, leave it for a few hours or days and see how easily you can pull it off and whether it brings a layer/or chunk of the underlying material with it.)

On balance I suspect you will need to make repairs to strengthen the underlying structure or perhaps to install suitable fixings points for the nosings before they are installed.

 

[Toby Newell]

^^^ a very long winded second to what I posted earlier, and someone else ie lipstick on a pig, house only as good as it's foundations etc. Your steps are seriously janky and badly constructed, improving them and making them more stable might be the answer.

As cubist says stairs are both functional and potentially highly dangerous.

You have to consider physics. Traversing stairs is done one foot at a time, weight all on one foot on a small section = high point loading. Then you have to look at fulcrums and moments. The bit of nosing hanging off the riser wants to pivot away from the riser when stepped upon the force of which is proportional to the distance to the edge of the riser.

In summary, this means you want as little overhang as possible, say 25 to 35mm. In the detail photo (v helpful) the 'bed' ie area where the nosing rests is too small.

I am minded to join the lobby for remedial work to the stairs themselves to ensure a more coherent and safe riser with a longer bed for the nosings.

Whilst it is noble for you to try and replicate, every one of the similar setups, ie wood nosings on stone steps (are these leading to a basement? most of them I have seen do for some ironically stupid reason) have been in terrible condition. Which would seem to suggest small dimension timber surrounded by moisture hugging stone and masonry may not be a great idea. Maybe consider rebuilding the steps properly using some nice reclaimed quarry tiles.