Re-building the bottom part of the stairs is our big project for the month of February. If you're interested, you can read some background on our stair project here and here.
The following steps discuss how I built the bullnose stair treads for our stairs. We had originally considered getting the bottom two stair treads made for us, but the quote I got was quite high, so I decided to just figure out how to do it myself.
The bottom stair tread was built out of an 11' piece of 1-1/16" x 11-1/4" oak that was cut into three pieces. The second stair was made out of a single 4' piece of the same lumber.
I placed these pieces on a flat surface, and then drew a rough outline of the template. The locations of biscuit joins were also noted, ensuring that biscuits would not show through the edge of a step. The biscuit holes were then cut.
I then secured the pieces together using a combination of biscuits, construction adhesive, and stainable wood glue.
The pieces were then clamped together and left to dry for 24 hours. A straight-edge was used to ensure that the finished piece would be flat and true.
An exact outline of the final step was drawn onto the combined piece. This was based on a rough template created for planning purposes, and then triple-checked against the measurements of the existing posts.
The step was cut out using a jigsaw.
This provided the first glimpse of our massive bottom bullnose step, along with the not-so-huge second bullnose step.
The entire surface of the step was then sanded with 60, 80 and 120 grit sandpaper. This made the cut edge smooth and consistent. Since I don't have a planer, this also helped to remove any defects or slight variations in height on the tread surface.
I then used a router to round the top and bottom edges of the steps. I had planned to do this with a palm sander until Meredith's Dad brought over his router. This made for a much higher quality finish, and probably saved me an hour of sanding.
The entire surface was then sanded again with 120 grit sandpaper. The tread will get a final sanding after installation (prior to staining).
