Building Stairs: For Pros by Pros
Stairbuilding Advice from the Experts

Introduction:

Stairs are at once utilitarian and beautiful. Building them and their railings is both the height of the carpenter's craft and a mundane combination of basic carpentry and seventh-grade math. Any trim carpenter, and most owner-builders, already possess the basic woodworking tools and skills. And anybody who can add, subtract, multiply, and divide, as well as sketch a project on graph paper, has the necessary ciphering tools.

If you've read this far, most likely you've got the tools and have completed seventh grade. What's left is the question of inclination. Stairs require careful craftsmanship, but they aren't art. They're craft. David Pye, in The Art and Nature of Workmanship, defines workmanship of risk and workmanship of certainty. Artists undertake workmanship of risk. If Michelangelo twitched on his final chisel stroke, he might have whacked David's nose clean off. Craftsmen rely on workmanship of certainty. When it really counts, they use aids such as jigs to make, for example, straight and square cuts. Stairbuilding is almost all workmanship of certainty.

That said, stairs do separate the carpenters from the hackers. Even the most rustic basement stairs built from framing lumber must be sturdy and consistent in tread (the parts you walk on) width and riser (the vertical space between treads) height. When a carpenter builds a wall or a roof, he can be off by a surprising amount--inches sometimes--and the homeowner might never know. Stairs aren't like that. Discrepancies as small as 1⁄4 in. become at worst a trip hazard, and at best an annoyance. Sound exacting? It is, but by employing tools of workmanship of certainty such as a tablesaw and a rip fence, staying within such tolerances barely merits a second thought.

Moving out of the basement and into the foyer, stairs and their railings, or balustrades, can assume an almost sculptural quality as the dominant element of a home's entry. Formal stairs are as much like furniture as anything a carpenter does. But furniture makers ply their craft on a bench in a shop where perfection is possible. The stairbuilder's work must seamlessly fit inside the usually imperfect world of homebuilding. The furniture maker's fit and finish, which formal stairs seem to demand, keep a lot of carpenters from even trying to build them. Here's the thing, though--stairbuilding is just another way to apply carpentry skills. Although I usually build some types of stairs in the shop, that's out of convenience, not necessity. I've built every type on-site as well.

Like any trade, stairbuilding can seem impossibly complex. And when learning, one's own assumptions can get in the way. Stairbuilding, more than any other aspect of carpentry I've learned, requires an open mind and an occasional leap of faith. I once had an apprentice who was stymied by the idea of running a diagonal structure across the plumb and level world of homebuilding. He just couldn't understand how to measure and plan that theoretical line in space where the stringer would rise between two floors. It rocked his world when I told him that I don't measure that diagonal. I look at the vertical rise, and from that I figure the number and height of the risers. I look at the horizontal distance the stair is to traverse and figure the width and number of treads from that. It took days before he got comfortable with the fact that what he'd assumed for years as being a key to the mystery of stairbuilding was incidental and largely an impediment to his learning.

In this book, I'll explain the basics of stair geometry and planning so that you can build stairs to fit any opening you encounter. You'll learn to build the most basic stairs by notching framing lumber for the stringers and screwing down rough treads. From there, it's a small leap to routing mortises in the stringers and building stairs whose assembled parts look as if they were cast in a mold.

The second part of this book is about railings. In 1985, when I first started in stair work, railings scared me. Much like my apprentice, that diagonal line through space overwhelmed my thinking. In a way, though, railings are easier than stairs. That rail should end up parallel to the existing stair, and all you need to do for that to happen is set its posts the same height off the stairs. And those curved parts that look as if they grew off the end of the railing? They're off-the-shelf parts that you join to the rail with a bolt. The secret to making them look seamless is sandpaper and elbow grease.

If you can measure the distance between two floors of a house and divide that number by 7 or 8, you can plan out a set of stairs. If you're competent with a router and a circular saw, you can cut a stringer. Can you read a level and operate a drill and a miter saw? You can learn to install a railing. You probably already possess most of the skills needed to build stairs. What this book will do is fill in a few gaps and show you how to apply some pretty basic carpentry in a way that can yield stunning results.

Contents:

1. Basic Design and Construction
Cutting Out Basic Stairs
A Site-Built Stair
Using a Story Pole to Lay Out Stairs
Building an L-Shaped Stair
A Veteran Stairbuilders Tools and Tips
A Quick Way to Build a Squeak-Free Stair

2. Railings, Newels, and Trim
Hanging a Wall Railing
Building a Custom Box Newel
Building Finish Stairs
Building an Exterior Newel Post
Installing Stair Skirtboards
Making a Bullnose Starting Step
Making a Curved Handrail
A Balustrade of Branches

3. Curved Stairways
A Freestanding Spiral Stair
Capping a Curved Stair Wall
Framing Curved Stairs on Site

4. Special Stairways
Cantilevered Stairway
A Stair in the Air
Disappearing Attic Stairways
A Staircase of Glass and Maple

Credits

Index

Soft-cover, 8-1/2  x 10-7/8 in., 160 pages, with color photos and drawings -
Published 2004

ISBN 978-1-56158-653-0