Laminate on stairs/railing puzzle

[LS]

I want to install laminate on the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs there is a railing with palings that are, for decorative purposes I imagine, floating just inside the edge of the stairs. The carpet is installed around all four sides.

See these pictures:

The palings are apparently toenailed into the stair. There is no access from below. There doesn't appear to be an easy way to change the location of the railing to make it easier to lay the laminate. I can certainly remove the railing and lay the laminate, but then how to reinstall it to "hide" the toenailed palings?

I could "wrap" the laminate around the paling but that would involve cutting and gluing a second piece to close the 4th side which is a degree of precision I don't know I have.

I could completely remove the railing and be done with it.

I could hire an installer to do these stairs and see if he/she has any better ideas.

Some of you could contribute your views. I'm very much interested. Thanks.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

While you say decorative purposes, they may be required by the building code.

When I had laminate installed, the "trained' installer could not figure out what to do on the upper stairs. I have a split entry and the lower stairs are closed on both sides so it was simple. The upper looked like yours. He sent a second "expert" who was going to do the job, but he never came back after agreeing to do the job. So, I did it myself.

In my case, I wanted to change the balusters anyway so I just cut out the old ones. They were just a tapered spindle. I then put a 1 x 10 on the side of the stairs to enclose it. On top of that, I put a 1 x 2 to make an ledge and then installed the proper trim for the new balusters. Looks pretty good and made the stairs much easier to do.

If you plan to wrap the laminate and install the same parts back, you'd probably want to drill a 3/4" hole in the laminate and put a 3/4" protrusion on the bottom of the spindles to rest in the hole. You may have to make some adjustments on the length of course.Thee is a bottom runner made to hold the bottoms (I forget the actual name of it) that could be put on the step and the laminate just comes up to it. I did that where my carpet is in the living room. Used to wrap around but looks better now, IMO.

Snoop around the railing section of the lumber yard and you will see all the parts you need. Some web sites also have them if you search for "railings" Ed

.

[LorneS]

One other possibility (or maybe a variation of what you suggest) - remove the railing, lay the laminate over the entire stair surface, then lay a

1x10 of Oak at the edge of the step and reinstall the railing on top of the 1x10.

Not sure if I would get away with toenailing the balusters. Maybe install them on the 1x10 first with a screw from the bottom, then install the 1x10 on top of the step.

Then copiously cover every exposed edge with trim of some sort.

Still not something I've done before, but definitely more in line with my capabilities, compared to trying to precision fit everything around the balusters.

Lorne