• Home
  • about emily
  • before + after
  • HGTV + DIY Network
  • good press
  • contact
  • Let’s Organize These Posts:

    • Art Attack
    • Backyard
    • Barn
    • Basement
    • Bathroom
    • Beach
    • Bedrooms
    • Being Thrifty
    • Business-y
    • Buying and Renting and Selling
    • Casual Celebrations
    • Closets
    • Curb Appeal
    • Dainty Details
    • Deck
    • Decor
    • Dining Room
    • DIY
    • Dog-Related
    • Entryway
    • Flooring
    • For the Kids
    • Garage
    • Gardening
    • Helping The Economy
    • HGTV + DIY Network Projects
    • Holiday-Related Projects
    • Home Safety
    • Kitchen
    • Lighting
    • Living Room
    • Merry Travels
    • Office Space
    • Organized
    • Other Pads
    • Outdoor Living
    • Scooter Fun
    • Stairwell
    • Sunroom
    • Supporting Sponsors
    • The Art Room
    • Tools
    • Uncategorizable
    • Wedding
    • Windows
    • Work-pads
  • Search

  • Hi, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

    I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle.

    You can find me writing for HGTV and DIY Network, follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note if you'd like. I love notes.

    Thanks for visiting!

  • BROWSE POSTS BY CATEGORY:

    • Art Attack (7)
    • Backyard (92)
    • Barn (8)
    • Basement (27)
    • Bathroom (43)
    • Beach (13)
    • Bedrooms (73)
    • Being Thrifty (53)
    • Business-y (12)
    • Buying and Renting and Selling (23)
    • Casual Celebrations (36)
    • Closets (17)
    • Curb Appeal (44)
    • Dainty Details (8)
    • Deck (23)
    • Decor (286)
    • Dining Room (37)
    • DIY (577)
    • Dog-Related (24)
    • Entryway (59)
    • Flooring (58)
    • For the Kids (32)
    • Garage (17)
    • Gardening (70)
    • Helping The Economy (30)
    • HGTV + DIY Network Projects (283)
    • Holiday-Related Projects (80)
    • Home Safety (12)
    • Kitchen (83)
    • Lighting (31)
    • Living Room (77)
    • Merry Travels (21)
    • Office Space (21)
    • Organized (41)
    • Other Pads (14)
    • Outdoor Living (12)
    • Scooter Fun (8)
    • Stairwell (20)
    • Sunroom (22)
    • Supporting Sponsors (43)
    • The Art Room (3)
    • Tools (43)
    • Uncategorizable (1)
    • Wedding (28)
    • Windows (14)
    • Work-pads (10)
  • Search

  • Pages

    • blog
    • Good Press: Special Features, Freelance Projects, and Long-Term Clients
    • Privacy Policy
    • about emily
    • before + after
      • before + after – transforming my first home
      • before + after, our current home
    • contact me
    • choose a badge and share the merrypad.com love
  • Home
  • about emily
  • before + after
  • HGTV + DIY Network
  • good press
  • contact

Squeak-No-More

May 22, 2013

I’ve written before about the state of our oak floors. They’re squeak-tastic but we love them anyways. We’ve done a lot of work over the last year to improve them, spending many days researching for and employing the use of the counter-snap screws that I wrote about here, and reinforcing the exposed joists in the basement ceiling with blocking and shims. Pete can make the subtle squeaks in the floor more pronounced that I can just based on his weight, but one area that was noticeable to all was the staircase.

I always took it as a good thing when I lived alone, an ain’t-no-intruders-going-to-kidnap-me-from-my-bed-while-I-slumber kind of peace of mind, but once we moved Julia into the house last summer and were needing to sneak upstairs to the bathroom after she was asleep early, we knew that the staircase squeaks would need a lot of attention, because there was just no avoiding them. I even tried to record the sound in the home tour video I posted here, documenting it knowing full well that we were about to try and reduce or remove the same squeaks.

The main staircase in our home

The squeaks weren’t easy to access, of course; the stairs leading to the second story are stacked directly over the stairs leading into the basement in this house, and the underside of those stairs had been completely drywalled over for a more finished look.

We could see the problem areas in the runners just by watching each other march up the stairs. And again, Pete was the one who was able to make the squeaks and shifts in the stairs the most obvious, if you’re doing this at home you’ll appreciate using your heaviest family member in this part of the project. There was a definite bounce, and we spent an afternoon marking with tape each of the problem areas with hopes of repairing it from the backside correctly. In some areas, we could see that the riser wasn’t shifting the same way that the runner was under pressure, and that’s actually the situation that we found to cause the most squeaks. And because it’s an older home, we even began to notice some shifting in the runner, as if it were sliding out of place backwards by a few millimeters. Never fear.

Squeaky stair. Here's one offender.

So, we did what any other person who watches too many home improvement shows does, and gutted the ceiling of our basement staircase to fully expose the underside of our main stairwell.

Gut job! This is officially the only drywall we've removed in this house.

Working in a small space meant that I got to take photos of Pete awkwardly wielding oversized drywall bits while I took pictures. Sometimes it’s better to just let him run with his game plan and stand back and help make sure that he’s not going to knock down the stairwell sconce.

That's a big piece of drywall.

It’s always interesting to see your home’s bones, and seeing the inner-architecture of the staircase was no different.

The inner structure of our staircase.

The most fascinating part, actually, was the rounded area that is at the base of the staircase. See up close how the board needed to be cut from within to allow a curvature? It makes me appreciate this little home so much more. I’m not the only one who finds these little details beautiful, right?

The making of a staircase curvature. So pretty.

I should mention that we started this project in early December; we had all hopes of getting it done in just a few days, but once we started making the repairs, we found that we liked to “live” on the staircase for a few days and walk around, jump up and down, and put it to use to make sure that 1) the shims and braces we installed were holding in place well before we patched back up the drywall, 2) make sure that the squeaks weren’t returning, and 3) pray to the DIY gods that new squeaks weren’t forming. We found a lot of all three situations happening in the first few days, and spent a lot of time bouncing around on the stairs to put our repairs to the test, making more repairs, putting the new repairs through the rigors, making more adjustments, and so forth. It wasn’t a quick process, but it ended up being pretty effective and by taking our time we ended up catching a lot more squeaks than we might have if we had closed the ceiling back up immediately.

Squeaky stair repairs.

While all of this bouncing was happening, we were also finalizing the plans for our winter wedding, and the stairwell to the basement started to get pretty cold (the basement and the staircase leading up from the basement are not heated), so we put off finishing the drywall until this spring.

The stairs are much improved, although certain steps especially towards the top of the staircase still have audible squeaks, mostly caused by the risers having a vertical movement against the horizontal runners. We couldn’t repair it all, but we can tolerate a minimum and tread carefully on those runners when creeping around at night.

Squeaky stair repairs.

Happy days, happy household repairs! Now that the ceiling is back up, we’re almost done with taping, mudding, and repainting (5 months after we started)!

Repairing the staircase post-stairwell adjustments.

How’ve you gone about repairing staircase squeaks?

Share

Stairwell

Emily
I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle. I've been a freelancer writer for 10+ years and you can find my work on popular home and garden sites, like HGTV.com. Follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note.

Comment


jb @BuildingMoxie
May 22, 2013 at 1:12 pm
Reply

I love your stairs E & P . . . I have had to do similar repairs myself + plus you’r right it is really nifty to see the kerfing behind the curved riser. very cool.



Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • HI, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

    I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle. Follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note if you'd like. I love notes.

    Thanks for visiting!

  • Instagram

    merrypad

    Merrypad by Emily Fazio
    Instagram post 17902304861708711 Instagram post 17902304861708711
    Highly recco mining those #herkimerdiamonds ✌️ Highly recco mining those #herkimerdiamonds ✌️
    Pt. 2: Well before Halloween, the last of the garl Pt. 2: Well before Halloween, the last of the garlic went into the home garden: 10 rows [L>R] 6 whole Nootka Rose as an experiment, 3x8 Mennonite-grown cloves from Aman’s, and 6x8 (and, I think, total 112? notes are cryptic) “normal.”
#gardennotes #growinggarlic #garden2023 #whatisnormal #merrypadathome
    Out of sight but [documented so it’s] not out of Out of sight but [documented so it’s] not out of mind! #garden2024 kicks off with my favorite biennial: elephant garlic! 15 cloves planted from small, to medium, to enormous. #gardennotes
    Annual garlic notes for #garden2023, pt. 1: this i Annual garlic notes for #garden2023, pt. 1: this is getting ooc, and I love it. 👩‍🌾🧑‍🌾

🧄 65% of the planting is in a new plot in the country. 🧄 Seeing if NR grows bigger with more sunlight. 🧄 Big @chasefarms cloves from 2021 were really productive in our home garden; can’t wait to see how they can show up next year in the new space. 🧄

Hand-turned a small bed, but big thanks to my sister, who rolled into town just in time to help me double its size (and did not complain once).
    One straggler from #garlic2021 debuted with 7 stal One straggler from #garlic2021 debuted with 7 stalks and 7 scapes, and I can’t wait to see this mammoth looks like when it’s pulled next month. #garlic2022 

Also, fierce springtime performance by parsley, chamomile, and self-seeded cilantro.
    Annual garlic notes #garden2022 ~315 cloves total Annual garlic notes #garden2022
~315 cloves total
50 in new, unfenced garden
Still need thick mulch on everything
Did a terrible job tracking varieties when I harvested, so it’s all a mix of hardneck now 😒
Added some big cloves from @chasefarms and look forward to adding some @fruition_seeds in #garden2023 when @porterfarmscsa delivers.
    Load More... follow emily: @merrypad



  • Like Us On Facebook

    Facebook Pagelike Widget



  • Popular Posts

    • How to fix an IKEA drawer. The Easy Fix For Broken IKEA Drawers 66.9k views
    • DIY sideboard rehab. 7 Steps for Restoring an Old Midcentury Sideboard Buffet 56.8k views
    • How to design and make a barn quilt. How to Make Your Own Barn Quilt 50k views
    • How to hang art on brick surfaces using specialty clips. The Easy Way to Hang Art on Brick or Stone 40.1k views
    • DIY driveway removal. How to Remove an Old Asphalt Driveway 35.1k views
    • Our DIY flagstone patio. Building a Flagstone Patio in One Day 32.8k views
    • Tips for dying pasta different colors, and a Halloween Recipe for the kids. How to Dye Pasta Different Colors (Halloween Recipe) 32.5k views
    • Fix an ikea dresser drawer. Life Support For An IKEA Dresser 29.7k views
    • Goodbye, gold fireplace covering. Less Is More: How to Remove a Fireplace Surround 29.5k views
    • After: Custom wooden garden fence. Designing a Durable Wooden Fence For Our Beautiful Backyard Garden 23k views



  • BROWSE POSTS BY CATEGORY:

    • Art Attack (7)
    • Backyard (92)
    • Barn (8)
    • Basement (27)
    • Bathroom (43)
    • Beach (13)
    • Bedrooms (73)
    • Being Thrifty (53)
    • Business-y (12)
    • Buying and Renting and Selling (23)
    • Casual Celebrations (36)
    • Closets (17)
    • Curb Appeal (44)
    • Dainty Details (8)
    • Deck (23)
    • Decor (286)
    • Dining Room (37)
    • DIY (577)
    • Dog-Related (24)
    • Entryway (59)
    • Flooring (58)
    • For the Kids (32)
    • Garage (17)
    • Gardening (70)
    • Helping The Economy (30)
    • HGTV + DIY Network Projects (283)
    • Holiday-Related Projects (80)
    • Home Safety (12)
    • Kitchen (83)
    • Lighting (31)
    • Living Room (77)
    • Merry Travels (21)
    • Office Space (21)
    • Organized (41)
    • Other Pads (14)
    • Outdoor Living (12)
    • Scooter Fun (8)
    • Stairwell (20)
    • Sunroom (22)
    • Supporting Sponsors (43)
    • The Art Room (3)
    • Tools (43)
    • Uncategorizable (1)
    • Wedding (28)
    • Windows (14)
    • Work-pads (10)





  • a little bit of everything, friends, DIY, and inspiration

    • Dadand.com < My husband and his BFF
    • HGTV
  • Some Legal

    Merrypad incorporates the occasional affiliate link to Amazon.com and Minted; we link to many other websites and products, but if it is in context of a paid sponsorship, it is always noted as such. Please review the privacy policy and contact me if you have any additional questions.

    Theme customized by Pete Fazio Creative, the guy from dadand.com.


© Copyright Merrypad