# Leveling stairs



## Mimir (Jun 24, 2013)

Hey all! I'm hoping someone with more experience than myself could help me out with this, I want to make sure that what I do will be safe. (As for why I'm doing this by myself, my former room-mate was a carpenter by trade as well as generally handy, and he and I were fixing up a bunch of stuff around my landlord's place. He's since become... indisposed, and so I'm trying to finish as much as I can.)

Most of it is simple stuff, but the reason I'm posting here is that we were maybe 2/3 of the way through putting some hardwood flooring on the stairs leading into the basement when he became unavailable, and as it stands the landing and one of the stairs are half finished. The worry is that without the lip attached, someone could slip.










Moreover, it seems that the stairs have warped over time, and are angling downwards. This wasn't an issue on any of the stairs that I did with him, but on the unfinished one, the edge of the stair is so low that the lip attachment does not even touch the plastic seating that screws into the stair itself.









Here is the bottom of the lip, and the plastic seating that it sits in.









Here is the lip and seating put together, on the edge of the stair. Although I don't think the lip needs to sit completely in the seating in order to be solid, when I snug it to the hardwood panelling, there is about 1/4 inch of space between the bottom of the seating and the top of the stair that it needs to screw to.

I was hoping that I could glue or screw some wood onto the end of the stairs, so that the plastic seating could be raised about a quarter inch and fit nicely with the lip. My two main concerns are, firstly, will this be safe? I see no reason it should not be, as long as the filler is attached firmly to the stairs. The plastic is pretty flimsy as-is, it really only seems to serve to provide a structure for the glue to dry around, while all the strength comes from the glue itself. Obviously, however, an experienced opinion would mean more than mine.

Secondly, what could I use as filler? I was thinking just a piece of the hardwood flooring, but as I only have a table and vertical saw available to me, I would have to be creative and very careful cutting it. I think I can make it work, but I wanted to make sure that my idea wouldn't end up with the lip coming off and hurting someone. If there's some kind of material or something that is meant for this, it would probably be better to just buy a bit of that, but I have no idea.

Sorry for the long post, but I only have some basic experience with woodworking and construction, and want to make very sure that what I do will be safe before I go and put it into place. Thanks in advance to anyone who has any help to offer!


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