I am stalling my flooring because I need some ideas on what to do with my steps. I have a 20x30 great room with 2 half circle steps up to a hallway. Since you can not bend wood I am trying to come up with something clever that will look good. I forgot to mention my entry (tile) meets the steps. If we square the steps up it will eat up my entry way. House is 23 yrs old and cannot match the tile so we thought about getting rock to match the fireplace. We picked it up today and it is very crude and not smooth enough. Any ideas out there what to do with the steps? Is there any way it could be done with wood? Ideas please!!!
Thanks

Hi Joy
Here's what I would do.

Install hardwood flooring on the steps so that the wood is within one inch of the entire radius edge beneath.

Then using the edge of the radius as a guide mark the flooring 2 inches from the edge of the radius. (I have made a tool for this before, you just nail 2 3"X3" flooring blocks on top of eachother and 1 3X6" block with a pencil hole drilled 4"in the center overhang on top of the other two. Now you have a tool for templating a 2" overhang on a step that is 3/4" higher that it.)

When you are done marking you will have a line that is exactly the same radius just back from the edge two inches.

Using a rotozip freehand cut your line.

When you are done hand sand it smooth and cut 22 1/8inch strips of hardwood long enough to completely wrap the edge. You may need to splice strips together if you don't have long enough boards, for this I recommend a 45 degree splice on the ends.This will be enough for a 1/2 inch overhang of your radius step.

Bend the strips around the radius one by one, glue and pin nail each one to the edge before it, clamping if necessary.

Once you putty and sand your step it may be hard to tell that it is not one solid piece of wood.

Good luck.

Thank you so much for the info. I just could not seem to get my guys to comprehend the message. They left and said they would be back in the morning. We live in the hill country, a little town not far from San Antonio. I got to thinking about maybe doing something with rock like matching my fireplace. I took off to check out some of the rock pavers at the shops close by. You will never believe this, a young man came up to me and asked if I needed some rock to be laid. I told him I was actually trying to match my stone on my fireplace for some steps. Turned out he had the exact match at his house and in a matter of 3 hrs I had the stone laid and it looks beautiful and unique. I had the floor here so I had him cut a few pieces to use as a guideline so we will not have to undercut for the floor.
Thanks again for the quick response.
Joy

Wow!
I'm not sure if I understand how that relates to your radius stair problem, but I am glad that the stars have alligned in your own personal constallation of construction bliss!

Oh so he made you some matching stone steps to your fireplace, very nice

I guess I need to explain better. I have 2 steps up to my guest bedrooms. They were poured in concrete when we built the house. I have always had carpeting so it was not a problem to cover the stairs with carpet.
Since the 2 semi circle steps are in the living room I tried to match the rock on the fireplace to cover the steps with. The guys I have installing could not comprehend how to do a semi circle with wood. They finished today and they steps covered in rock really adds something to the room.
Thanks for you help.