Fixing a staircase is usually a matter of tightening up its parts. Most stairs are constructed of wood, and wood is a responsive material: it expands when the surrounding humidity increases and shrinks when its environment is dry. Even though we can’t see it happening, these tiny movements in the wood, coupled with human contact—you, your family, and your pets, walking, stomping, and bounding up and down, every day—loosen the parts of a staircase. Eventually, the stairs begin to talk, as only stairs can: they squeak.

If the joints of your staircase are not as snug as they once were, you can help them settle down.

Stairs can also be a hazard for the elderly and for small children. I’ll talk about a couple of fixes to improve safety, too.

It has more parts, but for our purposes, this is what you should know about staircases. Let’s start with what we step on: the horizontal part of a step is called the tread; the vertical part is the riser. The banister—what we hold onto going up and down—has three main parts: the handrail that we grasp, the vertical posts spaced evenly along its length, which support the handrail, called balusters, and a larger, supporting vertical piece at the bottom of the handrail, called a newel post.

Squeaky stairs signal loose joints, and they’re fairly easy to fix. We’ll start with the simplest procedure, and go from there.

This doesn’t make it easier, but if you must, remove carpet and padding from the steps to get to the stair. (Find out how in Chapter 6.) Follow the directions and watch out for furring strips, which may be located not only at the top and bottom of the stair run, but also at an interval or intervals where seams of the carpet start and end.

To mark the offending steps, you’ll need your roll of painter’s or masking tape.

Ask the heaviest member of your family (no offense intended) to walk up and down the stairs so you can locate the protesting tread or treads. Mark them with a piece of tape.

You’ll also need some powdered graphite, which comes in a little squeeze bottle. You can squeeze the graphite out of the container and into the offending, noisy joints. In the case where the joint is between the top of the riser and the tread, you might want to hold a piece of cardboard underneath the graphite bottle to catch the falling powder, then blow it off the cardboard into the joint.

This will lubricate the joints, and may be all you need. If not, try the next procedure.

Like the wood floor fixes in Chapter 6, taming squeaks is much easier if you can get to them from under the stairs.

You’ll need the following:

You can tighten the joint between tread and riser by drilling straight down through the tread into the riser, and inserting and tightening the screw.

Be sure to mark the location for your drill bit carefully, and keep your drill bit straight—that is, perpendicular to the surface you are drilling. You don’t want the screw to go through the tread and miss the riser!

You’ll need the following:

Another way to fill the gap left by a countersunk fastener is to buy a package of small, round wooden plugs, the same size as the screw head. These are called dowel plugs, because these small wood wafers are cut from a wooden dowel. Coat one side of the plug with glue and insert the glued side in the hole; then finish as desired. Some people like to use these plugs; others prefer the putty fix.

With use, time, and fluctuations in humidity, the vertical balusters sometimes loosen in the mortises where they join the handrail, causing a shaky situation that’s not good when you’re negotiating stairs—the handrail should support you, not the reverse.

Here are two ways to tighten the relationship between handrail and baluster.

For the “shimy” solution, you’ll need the following:

For the “screwy” solution, you’ll need the following:

Sometimes the baluster gets loose in its bottom mortise—its joint with the stair tread. You’ll need another pilot hole and countersunk screw for this one.

You’ll also need the following:

For elders and children, a staircase can be a hazard. A secure handrail and stair treads tight to the risers are great first steps, but the young and the frail may need extra help.

Falls are the leading cause of life-threatening, debilitating injury for the elderly, and falls on stairs are a common culprit. If you have an older person living with you, you want to make sure that they can see the steps.

You’ll need the following:

If there are any step-ups or places where the floor is uneven—sills in doorways, for example, where an elderly person might trip—mark these step-ups and sills with reflective tape as well. Even a half-inch rise in the floor surface could create a problem for someone with poor mobility or vision.

Child safety gates have been around for years. They’re an inexpensive way to keep active and curious youngsters from an accident on the stairs, or any other place where they might find themselves in harm’s way.

When my son was just 10 months old, he was quite the little bruiser, built solid and full of energy. We had put safety gates on our stairs, but at that time, what was available was a fairly simple design that clamped to the sides of the stairway by means of pressure. There were no fasteners on the thing that I could screw into the wall.

One day, my boy was cruising around on the upper floor in his little walker, careening against the walls (why I learned to repair drywall). He worked up such a head of steam that, in a split second, he crashed against the pressure-installed gate and was on his way down the steps when I grabbed him, and the walker, preventing a disaster. Within an hour I was at the hardware store, looking for the right straps and screws to secure the gate to the walls. We rigged our own safety setup. And the walker went, as my son would say when he couldn’t locate something, “bye-bye someplace.”

Pressure mounted gates are still around, but the Consumer Product Safety Commission does not recommend their installation at the top of stairs, because children (like someone I know) can push them over and fall down the stairs. Select gates with hardware mounts, screw them into the wall securely, and periodically check the screws to see that they are still tightly fastened.