Introduction
According to Mark Roemer Oakland, squeaky stairs are a mildly infuriating annoyance. They bewilder and spook you at night when you’re going to the kitchen for a cup of water or late-night snacks. Let’s check out a few ways to fix your squeaky stairs and get rid of that annoyance.
The Details
1. Use a lubricant – If the squeak is coming from the sides or the back of the tread, simply filling up the crack between the riser and the tread with lubricant can fix the issue. Fill the crack with talcum powder or graphite powder and the noise should be reduced enough to not be noticeable.
Avoid greasy oil-based lubricants since they can make the spot sticky with dust or even warp the wood. While this doesn’t prevent the wood pieces from rubbing against each other, it does reduce friction drastically, along with the noise.
2. Screw it down – If your stair squeaks at the front, you need to tighten up the fitting between the riser and the tread with a few screws. Get a few number 8 screws from a local home improvement center and drill three pilot holes evenly across the front portion of the tread that lines up with the riser.
Drill those screws in the holes and make sure that they are sunk below the surface of the tread. If you leave a screw sticking up from the tread, it will obviously injure someone at home. Once the screws are secured, use a wood filler that matches the color of the stairs and fill in the slight indentations to hide the screws for a neat look.
3. Nail them into the risers – If the squeaky noise is coming from the side of the tread and you want a more permanent solution instead of reducing the noise with dry lubricants, it’s best to nail in the tread. Use 8d or 10d nails that have a length of 2 to 3 inches for the job. After you’re done, make sure that the heads of the nails aren’t poking out the surface of the wood so that they don’t cause injuries. You can also hide the nails with an appropriately colored wood filler.
4. Fix them from underneath – Interior staircases are hard from underneath. However, if your stairs provide easy access to the underneath area, you can silence those squeaks with the best method. Get wedge-shaped glue blocks from a home improvement center for each step. Apply wood glue to the shorter sides of each glue block and press them at the right angle created by the meeting position of the riser and the tread. Position two blocks at opposite edges of the step and one at the center.
Conclusion
Mark Roemer Oakland suggests that you use the methods mentioned above to fix your squeaky stairs. Squeaky stairs are usually the result of wear and tear that causes one wooden section to rub against another or a screw or metal nail. Fixing that solves the issue.