Scavenger Chic

Quick Repair for Old Deck Stairs

• By Joan
• July 31, 2019
• 3 Comments

I’ve mentioned it before, but we’ve been in our current home for 27 years.  And after 27 years there are repairs that need to be made.  This time I’m working on a set of stairs on my deck.

Some of the wood is starting to show it’s age.  A couple of the stair treads had broken in half and where you can see the open grain of the wood, water would seep  in every time it rains, weakening the wood and leading to rot. 

I have to apologize, I never got around to taking a picture of the broken treads before I ripped them off of there.

I really had no plans to work on this project this summer, but when son #1 had leftover scraps from working on his deck I saw the possibilities.

What could be more perfect… I saved him a trip to the dump and he saved me a trip to the hardware store.

Cut new stair treads to length and use deck screws to screw in place.

Besides the stair treads, the stair risers also needed a little homeowner maintenance.  One  problem with stair risers is their tendency to split on the corners.  The stair riser is not actually rotten, I think it splits from being weakened by the screw hole  which splits the wood and the extra pressure it gets when people use the stair edge.

A couple of these broken corners is probably the reason a few of the treads broke in half.

You have two choices for your fix, either replace the entire stair risers or reinforce the old.  Guess which one I chose…reinforce the old.

Cut a piece of scrap treated wood and sandwich your old wood with the new.  Use deck screws to secure in place.

If your old wood is rotten it will have to be torn out and replaced.

One other fix before attaching the new stair tread was to protect the old stair riser from soaking up more water.  A small piece of metal flashing does the trick.

OK, that’s not really metal flashing, that is an aluminum soda can pulled out of the recycling bin.

You can’t see my makeshift aluminum flashing from the front and once the risers and treads are painted you will never notice that the wood hasn’t been there since the beginning.

The stain is coming but right now the wood is too new.    Apparently when the wood soaks up a bead of water, it’s then ready for the stain.

So far the only cost I’ve had to incur was the deck screws.  That will all change once I finally get another gallon of the deck stain.

I know you can do this easy deck fix.  Until next time, stay inspired.

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