|
Helping You Make Your Home Your Castle |
Furniture & Furnishing & Decorations
|
How to Make Stair Stringers
Building Stairs
|
Introduction:
For building stairs you need to know how to make the stair stringers. Building a set of stairs seems like a complicated and daunting task but it really isn’t. Building a straight run set of stair such as for most decks and porches is an easy DIY task.
To build the set stairs you only need patience, some basic math skills, a framing square, and of course the hardware to attach the stair stringers to the deck or porch.
The first thing to determine is how high it is to
the
top of the porch or deck the stairs (landing) will
be rising to. A comfortable step (rise) is in the 7
to 8 inch range.
Divide the height to the total rise of the stairs
by 7 to determine how many rises or steps you need.
For example, if the height to the landing is 70
inches it will take 10 rises to get to the top of
the landing. In most cases this will not come out
as a whole number but it does in our example.
In most cases it comes out to be a fraction such as
7 ½ inches or some such fraction.
When
building stairs there is always one less tread than
there are risers. In this case with 10 risers, that
means there are 9 treads. The floor of the deck or
porches serves as the top tread.
When cutting my stringers tread should be a
comfortable depth. A treads that is 10 inches in
depth is common. For a 10 inch tread depth you will
need a stringer that is 2x12 inches. This makes it
easier to figure out how much room the stairs will
require. In this case the run is determined by
multiplying the 9 treads x 10 inches = 90 inches.
So the total run of the stairs will be 90 inches.
Another example of how this works are stairs that
go from the first floor to the second floor. This
takes 14 risers at 7 and 5/8 inches. This means
there are 13 treads. For the run take 13 x 10 which
is 130 inches.
In most cases you will need three stair stringers
to make the stairs. After you cut the first stair
stringer use it as a pattern to cut the remaining
two stringers. Making stair stringers may seem like
an overwhelming task but it is really quite easy.
If you take the time and patience and a little
thought you can cut stair stringers like a pro.
A Great DIY Guide
Home Improvement Plus Perks Copyright©2008