The front oak staircase in my 10 year old house has developed a crack on both landings. The cracks are about 1/8″ wide, in the middle of a board, and run the width of the landing. If this happened on a tongue-and-groove floor I would know how to repair it (cut out and replace the board).
The fact that the cracks are in the middle of a board makes me suspect the landing boards are edge-glued rather than nailed together. Is this typical? Any hints on how to approach this repair?
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Replies
Here are a few suggestions:
You could fill the crack with wood filler or even a color epoxy, sand smooth and touch up. However, crack may re-appear over time.
You could run a saw kerf down the crack almost clear thru to the bottom. This action should help alleviate the built-up stress (tension) between the rest of the landing boards. Rout or chisel some butterfly shaped keyways into the cracked board and glue in contrasting wood keys. These will keep the board from splitting open any wider. Place several keys along the board's length, and fill in the remaining crack with wood filler, putty or epoxy.
You could cut out the split area with a saw or router. Say.... cut out a section approx 1/2 inch wide on each side of the crack. Cut a wood strip to fit back in place. Face nail the existing oak board with some 15ga or 16 ga brad nails. Also face nail the strip filler piece and add some construction adhesive to bottom of strip when installing. Fill in all nail holes and stain touch-up where needed. When cutting filler strip, run strip thru table saw and rip a 5 degree bevel on each side of said strip. this will make it easier to fit back in place, yet give you a nice tight fit on top.
You could rip out the entire offending board and replace with a new one of same type. Rip board with slight bevel as mentioned above and install using construction adhesive and face nailing some brad nails as mentioned before. Face nail off the 2 existing boards (original boards) on either side as well.
You could cut open the cracked area somewhat wider and install a rope chinking. I saw Tommy Silva do this on a remodeling program one time. He dyed the rope using wood stain and embedded the rope into the existing crack...theory being the rope acted as a control joint and hid the joint whenever the boards moved due to humidity. Truthfully, it looked pretty hokey... I wouldn't do it...but thought I'd mentioned it anyway.
It does sound as though the landing boards were edge glued. By cutting thru the offending board, you will be removing the stress off the most of the existing glued boards. I definately would not apply glue to the edges of any new filler strip...better to let the board float on it's own and keep the other slanding sections seperated from one another.
Good luck on whatever plan of attack you take.
Davo
How wide are the boards? Typically a landing would be made up with flooring (width would vary) that was nailed to the subfloor and the nosing would be a separate piece. Gaps would be expected to form between the boards and would be similar in size to boards in the main floor.
If the landing was made of one huge glued up board, it would be expected to crack.