My post copied from another forum:

Good Evening All,

As many have read from my numerous previous threads I've been working to finish my first hardwood floor installation using Artisan pre-finished 3/4" solid maple. After a brief detour in preparing the basement for carpet I've begun the last phase of this floor project: the entry stairway.

We have a bog standard split-level entry stairway; the front door enters onto a small landing (roughly 4' x 5-1/2') and there are stairs going up and down. The current plan is to put the wood down on the landing and treads while installing painted white risers.

I had asked previously whether I could keep the existing 1" particle board rough treads but I scrapped that in favor of replacing them with 1x12 lumber to eliminate the squeaking of the old rough treads.

I thought I was golden with the landing; it appeared to be a plywood subfloor. As with many other aspects of my projects this turned out to be not the case: the plywood is only 1/8" - 1/4" thick over more particle board.

I'm trying to figure out how to treat with this particle board sub-floor. In the upper floor of the house I laid 1/2" CDX plywood over the particle board to nail to. This worked just fine. Unfortunately repeating this on the landing will raise the height of the floor to the point where the exterior door will interfere. As this is a metal framed door I'm not entirely excited at the prospect of trimming it and I'm not entertaining at all the idea of raising the door case upwards.

So from what I can see that leaves me two options: rip up the particle board or glue the wood instead of nailing. My first plan was to rip up the particle board but a fair portion of it runs under the stair stringers leading up to the upper floor. I'm leery about messing with that structure at all at the moment.

Finally to my question (apologies if I put anybody to sleep): is the landing a small enough area to be able to glue the flooring down? I'm already planning on gluing the wood on the stair treads (understanding that they're a different situation) and would really like to be able to glue the landing as well.

Thoughts? Ideas? Any feedback is appreciated as always.

Thanks!
Charlie

IMO it's no big deal to glue it. I would full spread Urethane adhesive, using 1/4" x 1/4" teeth.

YES! Will do! Thank you!

Yup, what Howard said.
Although, I might even have cheated a bit, using urethane glue in a zigzag pattern on bottom of each board, and suppliment with nails. Have found this to be far less messy when working in confined quarters, such as you describe: stairs up, stairs down, small space to work in. I see myself falling face down into the glue at some point (lol)