Storage Area Under Stairs Framed

With the stairs complete, my young apprentice helped me frame the walls underneath the stairs. In addition to framing out the storage area underneath the stairs, these framed walls provide additional support to the stringers. The exterior wall was then insulated with two layers of R14 insulation.

Basement Staircase 3 - Stairs

With the staircase planned and landing built, I proceeded to build the upper and lower sets of stairs. The first step was to draw out a stringer using a framing square, and then cut it out using a circular saw (to do the initial cut) and a jig saw (to finish the cut from the opposite side).

I then checked that the stringer fit the space and was level, and made a few minor adjustments. Once the stringer was perfect, I traced and copied it to make two more identical stringers. This process was followed to create the set of three 2x12 stringers for both the upper stairs and lower stairs.

The stringers were spaced out from the wall using a 2x4, leaving space for drywall (1/2") and a skirtboard (1"). The stringers were then secured to the landing and floor above/below, as well as the adjacent wall. Additional support walls would be added from underneath as well.

Treads and risers were then cut with a circular saw and installed using construction adhesive and flooring screws. We ended up with a rise of 7 1/4" and a run of 8" for each step, and were able to gain an inch from the width of the old stairs. The stairs were created with the intention of finishing with engineered wood, so at that time a bullnose will also be added.

... and the quality assurance department gave the stairs a passing grade.

Basement Staircase 2 - Landing

Prior to re-building the stairs, I spent quite a bit of time researching the project. I had purchased the book Building Stairs by Andy Engel when re-finishing the main floor stairs, and have found it to be an excellent resource for both projects.

We did not have much flexibility with the new stairs, as the location of the kitchen door and side door could not be changed. Drawing up the plans for the stairs was not too difficult, but I checked the measurements over and over to avoid duplicate work (and I did find a couple of errors along the way). I treated the landing like a big step, so the rise and run are consistent between the upper and lower staircase. It would have been nice to decrease the rise a bit and increase the run a bit, but that just was not possible with the location of the side door and first floor joists.

The first step in building the stairs was to frame the wall beside the stairwell.

Once that wall was in place, I installed the landing using 2x10's and 3/4" plywood. This landing is supported on one side by the framed wall and on the other side by a half wall and some openings in the bricks underneath the door.

Basement Staircase 1 - Demolition

The next project in the basement is replacing the stairs, so we tore the old stairs out last week. The old stairs did not fit because of the new basement floor height, and had other issues (i.e. not level, inconsistent rise and run, weak spots).

"Finished" Stairs

As promised, provided below are photos of the finished stairs. We will do a full set of before and afters once everything is trimmed and painted.

For those of you who have not been following this project regularly, here is a little history. The front hall was closed off from the stairs when we bought the house, and we decided to open it up without any real plan for finishing the stairs, which sat in limbo for over a year. With some help from our readers, we decided on a plan. We then executed by building strong posts, building the curved treads and risers, installing the posts and railing, sanding and staining the railings/posts/treads/risers, and then installing hardwood on the landings.

Stairs Phase 6: Sanding and Staining

Last Sunday, when all of Canada was celebrating a win in the gold medal hockey game, I was celebrating the end of this stairs project (of course I was celebrating the hockey win as well).

Our stairs were quite noisy, so we tried to reduce this noise by screwing the risers to the treads and screwing corner brackets to tighten the treads to the risers; this didn't seem to make much of a difference. I then applied construction adhesive to all of the seams (i.e. tread/riser, tread/stringer, riser/stringer); this reduced the noise on the stairs by about 80-90%, so I was happy with that result.

Then the sanding began! We put up plastic to try to reduce the amount of dust going into the rest of the house. I then sanded all of the old steps, posts, and railings using a palm sander and by hand, starting with 60 grit and 80 grit sandpaper. This took hours ... much harder than sanding a few bedrooms with a drum sander and edger.

Oak trim was then installed on the posts. We bought trim that was similar to the original trim from the posts. Also, beech bullnose pieces were installed on the edge of the landings. Everything (old and new) was then sanded with 120 grit sandpaper to prepare for staining.

The treads, risers, posts and railings were then stained using a custom stain that we ordered to match our hardwood floors. We had originally planned to paint the risers white, but after working hard to create beautiful curved oak risers, we decided to go ahead and stain all of the risers as well.

Once that was dry, three coats of oil-based polyurethane were applied. I will take some photos of the "finished product" in the daylight and post them this weekend. We still need to install hardwood flooring on the landings, install the baseboards, paint the stringers/spindles/baseboards white, re-paint the wall, and have a runner installed. The hard work is done though.

Stairs Phase 5: Installing Railing

There were a couple of areas around the stairs/posts that needed some work to make things look finished. These will be painted and partially covered by baseboards, but we still made them out of oak. The second piece was made out of multiple pieces of oak joined with biscuits and glue (much like the stair tread).

Then it was onto the railing. Installing this short piece of railing was actually quite easy (took less than an hour), but it required a lot of thought/planning, very careful measurements, and some prep time (2-3 hours to cut spindles, drill dowel holes, etc). I didn't take any photos during the installation as I did not want the glue to start setting. Basically, the spindles were attached to both the base and the railing by 3/8" dowels and wood glue, and then the spindles were attached to the railing in the same manner. You can see the dowel holes in the base, spindles, and railing in the photo below.

We ended up using the $3 railing that we found at the local ReStore, as it was the closest match we could find to our existing railing. We used a hanger bolt as the primary means to secure the railing to the posts; some finish nails and wood glue were also used to prevent twisting. A hole was drilled into the bottom of the railing to allow for the nut to be secured to the hanger bolt. This hole was then covered by filler pieces; this area will not generally be visible.

We are finally starting to see what the finished product will look like when we are done. We have a lot of sanding to do, some trimwork to install, and then we can finally stain and paint everything.

Stairs Phase 4: Installing Second Step and Post

There were a couple of areas in the old post that had been damaged over the years, so we repaired those by cutting out the damaged area, cutting a new piece of oak the same size, and installing it with some wood glue. These replacement pieces should not be very noticeable once they are sanded and stained.

We then built and installed the second step. This was done in the same way as the first step, but was much easier as this piece was not as complicated. Bending the riser was a bit trickier this time though (wood almost cracked a couple of times), as the curve of this step has a small radius.

We then installed the second post using biscuits, wood glue, and a few finish nails. This post was a bit tricky, as the wall is not perfectly straight, so I had to trace the shape of the wall onto the wood and then cut the wood to match that shape.

Well, the difficult stuff is done and it's starting to look like our mock-up. We need to do some sanding on the posts, install the railing, install some trimwork, and then sand everything to prepare for staining.

More Plaster?

For some reason I decided not to remove the plaster in the stairwell down to the basement when we were gutting the house. We decided that today was the day to get rid of it, so Meredith did the plaster and I did the lathe. Ugh ... so dusty and messy.




You can see the backs of the oak risers in this photo. We plan to try to reduce the amount of creaking on these stairs by doing some work from underneath.

We found some interesting stuff again during this demo, including a penny from 1912 and a Cadillac tobacco card.

Stairs Phase 3: Installing First Step and Post

Now that we have built the stair tread and riser, things are starting to come together. First, we built a base to support the bottom step. This was built out of 3/4" plywood sitting on top of 2x8's that had been ripped down to make the finished step the appropriate height. The plan is for most of the step to be supported by this base, while using the riser to provide additional support to the edge of the step (especially around the curves).

Installing the finished stair tread and riser was a little tricky. Because the one post was surrounded by tread on 3.5 sides, the tread had to actually be lifted over the two posts and guided down to the ground ... with about 1/4" of forgiveness. The tread and riser were secured by applying construction adhesive to the base, and by drilling screws from the basement up through the floor and into the riser.

The oak components of the first post were then installed using biscuit joins and wood glue, as well as a few nails in places that will be covered later (we want to minimize the number of nails showing in the finished product). I used simple right angle joints instead of 45 degree miter joints because this is the way the existing post was installed 80+ years ago.

Stairs Phase 2: Building the Curved Riser

Now that the stair tread was cut, we needed to create a curved riser to fit. Since we plan to paint the riser, we had a few options for its construction, but I decided to make it out of a piece of oak so as to match what would have been done when the house was built in the 1920's. We could have used snake ply and covered that with a veneer, but this seemed lazy to me and would not have been much cheaper or easier than using oak (and I don't know if veneers are available in a 10' length?).

The first step was to cut boards to create a form that the oak riser would wrap around. This was accomplished by tracing the curve of the stair tread onto pieces of 1" board and cutting them out with a jigsaw.

The boards were then lathered with construction adhesive, clamped together (six boards in total for a 6" form), and left to dry overnight.

The forms were then sanded with 60 grit sandpaper to make a consistent, round form.

The forms were then secured to the stair tread using construction adhesive, wood glue, and corner braces. We were actually able to use the form from the original stairs on the smaller curve; two forms that we created were used on the bigger curve, and then a piece of plywood was used for the straight portion.

Now for the fun part. The riser was created out of a 10' piece of 1" oak. I was sure to pick out a piece of wood that was quartersawn (grain perpendicular to face of board) so as to limit the risk of the board splitting when curved. I measured the length of the curved areas and marked those on the board. I then cut hundreds of little kerfs across the back of those curved areas, spacing them 1/4" apart and leaving 1/8" of board on the uncut side (I probably could have gone with 3/8" spacing since our curves have a large radius, but I wanted to be conservative). I had originally planned to do this with the table saw, but it was just too difficult and slow to cut across a 10' board, so I used the circular saw instead and that worked fine.

We then secured this board to the forms using a ton of wood glue, as well as some 3/4" screws on the straight portions. This was clamped and left to dry for 24 hours, and then the overhanging board was cut off.