Fifteen or so years ago, I promised the wife I’d replace the deathtrap the original builder passed off for stairs down to the basement: http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m293/billg71/Home%20Improvements/IMG_0141-2.jpg
9-1/4″ run, 8-1/4″ rise, all in a floor opening of 94″. “Can’t see it from my house!”, right? It felt like an ascent to the peak of Everest just to get upstairs from the office….
So, business being slow, I’ve been working on the basement. First order of business was to jack up the floor. Double spruce 2×10 spanning 15′, carrying 13′ of floor load. “Can’t see it from my house!” again. So, after jacking almost 2″ of sag out of the beam and jacking the beams around the stairwell and building walls under them, I was ready to(finally) rebuild the stairs.
My first inclination was to build a conventional stairwell with 2×12 stringers and pine treads and use MDF for skirts and risers, paint it all and be done. You know, the standard tract-builder fare, I’ve done hundreds of them, half a working day and you better be finished or you’d have been better off sitting home watching The View….
But I was down at Highland Hardware the other day and they had pine 1x10s C&Better for $6.99. So I picked through them and bought a few that I could rip 3-4″ riftsawn for trim off the outer edges, thinking I’d add them to stock. Called the lumber salesman and got pricing on 2x12s, step tread and MDF and the a random thought came up: “Dummy, you always wanted to build one of those housed-stringer stairs, this is going down to the WOODshop, why not try it now?” When I figured out it was a wash cash-wise to eliminate the center stringer and skirts and use the clear pine for risers I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Another trip to Atlanta and I had riser stock, the only problem was that 40 bucks worth of lumber ended up costing me a couple of hundred by the time I made it out of the store with all the other neat stuff I’d been meaning to buy….
Here are the results:
http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m293/billg71/Home%20Improvements/IMG_0148.jpg
And underneath:
http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m293/billg71/Home%20Improvements/IMG_0151.jpg
I called my son and asked him if he could come out and help(Ouch!) and he did. We milled the stock on the lunchbox planer and the benchtop table saw, he shellaced the risers, sanded them and gave them a light coat of stain for contrast, I routed and cut the stringers. Took a little more time to profile the edges of the treads, the lumberyard(thank you Lummus Supply!) didn’t have a lot of tread stock on hand and I was culling more for appearance than than profile, so some of the treads didn’t have exactly a full bullnose…. Or even part of a bullnose….
I decided to forego the traditional “Full-Meal-Deal” with the dadoed and rabbeted treads and grooved risers, figuring pocket screws would serve, and they did. Finished this afternoon in time to burn some burgers on the grill and a Corona or two(or three):
http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m293/billg71/Home%20Improvements/IMG_0152.jpg
I’m happy, stairs are in, don’t squeak and look good, but now I know why they don’t build them like that anymore. And it’ll take a whole bunch of money to get me to do it again!
All in all, I’d have to call it a good weekend.
Best to all,
Bill
Replies
The beer and the hamburger in the last shot look good.....oh nice stairs.
Oh, they were good...
And they went down really well with a handful of ibuprofen. Getting old doesn't have to suck, you just gotta take more pills...
Got up Monday morning at 5:00, left the house at 6:30 and was on the job in Blue Ridge at 8:00. Cleaned up last night, piddled around this evening and tomorrow a buddy is coming with his truck to pick up wall paneling at the Big Ernge and help me single-side the walls. They have a LP product, simulated 1x8 V-groove with wood grain texture, preprimed, at $17.50/sheet. Nail it up, roll a coat of flat white on it and I'm done! For the time being....
Best,
Bill
So, how did the head height come out with that 94" opening?
And, what rise/run did you end up with?
Thanks, Scott!
If you'd seen the basement about halfway through, you would have thought a tornado had hit. It looked like a sawdust bomb had gone off. I filled up 2 filter bags on the Fein with the table saw and router and the planer contributed another two 40-gal trash bags worth on it's own. I had bought one of those cyclone lids and some 4" flex to hook it up but I've got to find a big filter bag for the outlet. As it was, about half the shavings went into the trash can and the other half came out of the outlet hose and had to be swept up. Thank God She Who Must Be Obeyed had gone shopping for the day! :) (never thought I'd say that)
And thank God again for 3M respirators and dust masks!
Bill
Matt, rise and run wound up at
Rise and run wound up at 7-5/16 and 9. Would have liked to get more on the run but I only had a 94" floor opening to play with. As it is I had to cut out a joist and put in some angle blocks just to get 75" of headroom at the last 3 risers.
Also for the first time I laid out my stringers on the diagonal using the CM calculator. It works really well, you can see this guy demonstrate on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr3EORuJSGY He has a set of videos on doing housed-stringer stairs that was a great help.
Best,
Bill
The new stairs look nice.
Re: >> As it is I had to cut out a joist and put in some angle blocks << Wonder what was above that.... :-)
>> 75" of headroom at the last 3 risers.<< 6'-8" (80") is a pretty standard minimum requirement.
Here anyway, your initial stairs rise/run would have been code compliant for our current code except that open risers aren't allowed. That is NC though. I'll bet that your stairs were compliant in GA when they were built. I'll also bet the builder had way less than $100 into the stairs. That is an example how us builder types keep the price of homes affordable, granted, those kind of stairs are probably not appripiate for a custom home. Sounds like the real issue was the size of the stair hole which probably went back to the initial house plan. Wonder how much it would have increased the cost of the home had the entire house been 2' wider or deeper overall.
I also have to wonder if your home was engineered and/or inspected when built though based on your description of the double 2x10 spanning the 15' with joists hanging off of it (I assume). Sounds like it is/was carrying a little over 100 sq ft of floor space. Sounds like that should have been either a piece of steel or at least a flitch beam. I'm sure the new support walls will help but wonder what is under them? 4" of concrete?
BTW - I can order a set of box steps like that for about $17 per step. I can understand just wanting to try out building the box stairs though.... Also factory stairs can be pretty hard to get into a completed house.
Thanks, Matt!
Yeah, I could have ordered a set built but getting them in would have been a stone beeatch... And would have taken all the fun out of it! Besides, I always wanted to build a set. I remember the older houses in SC when I was growing up and being fascinated at how the stairs were held together, all the wedges and stuff.
So you're in NC? I run a small framing company a little South in North Georgia, most of my work is from Ellijay North. If you ever get over into Western NC let me know, we'll have lunch. I've done a couple of jobs outside Murphy and one right at the start of the Tail of the Dragon in Tapoco. Small world....
I ran the floor beam on BC Calc, it's carrying a 12'2 trib(180 sft) of bedrooms, a bath and a half-bath with tile floors in a mud bed. Just running the load as sleeping space and ignoring the mud and tile load, it comes back as a double 11-7/8 with a L/311/425 deflection, max at .578". I wouldn't consider that to be anywhere near satisfactory for any of my customers. I'd probably bump it to a double 16 just to make sure I didn't crack tile. BTW, the beam is a Spruce 2x10, not even pine. It probably would have carried just fine with a 1/2" flitch plate. And the wall IS sitting on 4" of concrete(I hope, I've never pulled out the hammer drill to check) but it's been curing for 35 years or so and it's pretty hard. I had to shoot 3" pins in with two shots from my .27-caliber Hilti gun
In Georgia, we're limited to the IRC requirement of 7-3/4 max rise but have an amendment to allow us a 9" run. They'll allow the 3/4 difference on the first and last risers but not if it exceeds 7-3/4, that's an absolute max here.
My house was built in the early '70's and our county was 'way out in the sticks then, I'm pretty sure they didn't have code enforcement. If they did it was probably along the lines of "Do you own the lot? Is the house pretty much on it?". Most of the houses in my subdivision have a steel beam in the garage(or a side-entry garage) and a longer stairwell opening, mine has a coat closet above at the end of the stairwell, I'm pretty sure they shortened the stairwell to get that closet in.
Not sure about the open risers down here, I'm thinking not since I've had customers who wanted me to cut the stringers so the 2x4 temp treads I put on would pass a final. They got COs so I guess it's OK.
Gotta go put some stuff away, get ready to move the workbench and do some framing punchout so I can run wall paneling this weekend. I'll post a pic or two.
Good jawin' atcha!
Best,
Bill