Boxing in Older concrete stairs.

[Alan]

Hi all, I have two sets of six concrete stairs with a landing in the middle I have to fix up.

We have two small kids who love to play on there and of course we are scared they fall and hurt them selves.

We might go for a thick carpet but I wondered if it was feasible to box the stairs in? They would still be hard but not as hard as concrete.

The rest of the house has sanded original floorboards stained and varnished and we love them. Putting the thick carpet on the stairs would kinda spoil the look of things.

Your thoughts gentlemen and women.

Regards Alan.

[Ali Mac]

Interesting post because I am about to do the same thing, for the same reason, in my case to cellar steps. My thought is to cut the tread out of nice 18mm ply and nail half round beading to cover the leading edge. But I'm not sure how to attach the tread to the step. One way is to bolt though to the (in my case) stone underneath, but this will show a bolt or screw head on the surface and this would need to be recessed. I thought I might do a trial where I use gripfil and glue the tread to the stone. If anyone's done this and it works I'd like to know. The risers could also be covered in the same way, although this doesn't really help with the objective.

Probably a good idea to make sure that final stair has tread and riser dimensions which conform to Bulding regs. My steps are victorian and steep (and different), but even so I think that even if I add 18mm to the bottom step the step height is reasonable (can't remember what it should be something like no more than 220mm - maybe someone could help on this).

Alistair

[Al]

WHOA there!

If your steps are concrete, they are almost certainly reinforced. Under no circumstances do you want to damage the steel reinforcement. Stick to glueing to the surface, bolting could cause catastrophic failure if you take out the reinforcement.

Al