Basement Stairs

Introduction

When Nikki and I were initially looking at the house with the realtor the basement stairs were a bit of a sore point. The stairs were made for midgets, oh wait I mean vertically challenged people. At 6' tall my hair was touching the ceiling all the way down the stairs and near the bottom I really had to duck to avoid hitting a floor joice for the 1st floor. Even Nikki had to duck to get under that joice. At the time Nikki and I said that’s no problem we will just rebuild the stairs once we move in. That sure sounded easy.

Planning

Once we owned the house and had moved in I started thinking more critically about how we could rebuild the stairs. There were load bearing joices to the left, right, and back of the stairs. In front of the stairs there was a cement wall. If we rebuilt the stairs it would have to be within the exact same bounds as moving the floor joices was too expensive. The stairs were not wide enough for a circular staircase. Nikki and I finally decided that we would rebuild the stairs with more rise to each stair thus eliminating 1 stair by the time you reached the bottom. The only problem is that building code states that the maximum rise is something like 8 inches. The stairs already had 8 inches of rise. Don’t tell anyone but we ended up going with 9 inches of rise. After completing the stairs I can say that 9 inches of rise is fine, so long as the stairs are a consistent 9 inches of rise (and the original stair rises were anything but consistent).

The first step in my rebuilding plan was to examine the existing stairs. They were obviously original from when the house was built back in 1936. The wood was showing some serious signs of wear. Most, but not all, stairs had been cut so that they were not as wide as they should have been. To this day I do not know why this was done. One thing I did notice is that the existing stair stringers, the part the stairs actually rest on, were attached to the 1st floor support joices in a very strange way. The floor joice has a large face that runs perpendicular to the floor. I would expect the stringers to be resting against one of these faces so that the weight of the stairs was pushing on the joice. Instead the stringers had been attached to the bottom face of the joice that ran parallel to the floor so that the weight of the stairs was pulling down on the joice. This is less than ideal because all the weight must be supported by whatever fasteners you use to attach the stringer to the joice. In our case the fasteners were 4 nails per stringer. That means that 8 nails nailed in vertically supported all the weight of the stairs and anything on them. It doesn't seem safe to me but then again it had worked for 70 years so it must have been reasonably safe.

So when I was done examining the existing stairs the next phase was to take some measurements and come up with a building plan. I had thought I could whip out a plan in about 1 hour. Boy was I wrong. It probably took me 12 hours to measure and plan everything. I won't go into great detail here but I will give you some insight into what you have to worry about. First you have to determine what angle to run you stringers at so that you cover the total run over the total rise. This is complicated significantly if you have a 90 degree turn in your stairs as we do. For each stair that comprises the 90 degree turn you have to make sure that there is sufficient space for your foot, at least relative to the standard stringer stairs. By that I mean that each stair on the stringer had a total run of 9.25”. That means that each of the 90 degree turn stairs should have approximately 9.25” of space for your foot at the center line of the stair.

Also for each 90 degree turn stair you must determine what angle you need that stair to run at and what dimensions that produces. Once you have dimensions you need to determine how many pieces of lumber you need to create that one stair as it will be far larger in some areas than a typical stair. You should already know the rise and run of every stair. If they are equal then you are in luck and you can run your stringers at a 45 degree angle. If they are not even you need to determine what angle to run your stringer at so that you can infinitely cut your rise and run out of it without running out of lumber. For our stringer we choose 9" of run and 9.25" of rise. Cutting the stringers at 45 degrees would have meant we would have only had 9" for the first rise, 8.75" for the second rise, 8.5" for the third and so on. Keep in mind that the stringer angle affects the total rise and run your stringers cover and thus affects the dimensions of your 90 degree turn stairs.

To put it simply, coming up with the plan for the stairs was incredibly complex. I was constantly using Geometry and Trigonometry to come up with the measurements. I am not saying that just to make myself sound smart, I just want the reader to know what may be involved. If you know your SOH CAH TOA rules and your Trig proofs involving like angles (i.e. the Zorro rule) then you will be fine without any refresher courses.

Materials, Destruction, and Construction

Ok so I had the plan, including how much lumber I was going to need. That part is infinitely important when you go to Home Depot so that you are not trying to do your calculations on the spot. I got all the lumber I needed and had Home Depot cut it roughly to size so I could get it in my car. I needed lumber that was 34" in length but I Home Depot cut it in 36" lengths. This is because the Home Depot miter saw makes really crappy cuts. It frays the edges like crazy and it does not always cut the lumber perfectly perpendicular to the lengthwise edges. If you have them cut it larger you have some extra material to correct for their cuts once you get home (assuming you have a table saw, miter saw, or some serious skill with a circular saw).

Once I got the wood home I spent about 4 hours trying to figure out how to cut the stringers correctly. In theory I needed an angle of 41.3453453 degrees (or some similarly ridiculous angle like that). Of course, it’s pretty hard to measure that angle out on the wood (Does your triangle tool get that accurate?). I recommend determining the length of the 3 sides of the corresponding triangle and measuring the lumber according to those lengths. You should be able to calculate the lengths down to 1/16” which will give you far more accuracy on the angle than if your triangle tool can provide. After about 4 hours I had stringers cut. It took the circular saw and a jig saw to get them just right. I then cut stairs that would rest on those stringers. Nikki and I both agreed that the stairs should have a rounded edge. This prompted me to purchase a router, my dream tool that I had been drooling over for years now. I got a porter cable router and it’s a beauty. The routers are expensive, from $100 to $300. You would think that is the most expensive part but you would be wrong. The router bits are ridiculous. I paid $30 for the ½” round router bit I needed for the stairs. Ouch!

I routed the top and bottom of the stairs. Routing is a lot of fun and the finished product looks great. So we had the stringers and the stairs. Now we needed the hardware. Both Nikki and I agreed that we should fasten the stairs from underneath so that were no screws or nails visible from the top, something the previous stairs' builder did not do. That way the stairs would look great if we decide to stain them. A quick trip to 84 lumber and $20 later we had all the hardware we needed to attach the stairs to the stringers and the stringers to the ceiling joice and lower stringer support.

It was now time to remove the old stairs. This was more fun but also more time consuming that I expected. Nikki and I found that the circular saw was by far the fastest way to dismantle the existing stairs as they were put together entirely with nails. After about 2 hours we had them down. The lumber used in the old stairs was pretty amazing. The 2x4 pieces were actually 2" x 4" rather than 1-3/4" by 3-1/2" like today’s lumber. We did notice some termite damage in one of the lower supports for the existing stringers. It’s a good thing we are replacing the stairs in their entirety.

Nikki and I next fashioned a lower support for the stringers. We then hung the stringers from the 1st floor joices and attached them to the lower stringer support we made. We then attached the stairs to the strings using metal L brackets and screws on the underside of the stairs. Just to ensure there will be no creaking in the stairs we also ran a bead of liquid nails on the stringers before laying the stairs in place. Now we had 6 of our 9 stairs in place. Now it was time to start worrying about the 90 degree turn stairs.

There would be 3 stairs that completed the 90 degree turn. We planned on 30 degrees for each of the three stairs. This was not ideal as far as keeping consistent foot spacing at the centerline of each stair but it sure did make the measurements a lot easier. In hindsight I am very thankful we choose to use a uniform 30 degrees for each stair because the measurements were already hard enough with 30 degrees.

Nikki and I spent the next 2 -1/2 days working on the 3 remaining stairs as compared to about 1 day for the first 6 stairs. For each stair I had the final stair sizes already planned but we had to plan out the support system, measure and cut the lumber, apply the router, and figure out how to attach the each stair (which were always multiple pieces of wood) to the supports so that no screws or nails showed. Suffice to say it took a long time to complete but we are both very happy with the results.

The new stairs are nearly finished. We walk up and down them on a daily basis and they feel incredibly solid and they look fantastic even as bare wood. I no longer have to duck at all while descending the stairs. Both Nikki and I are incredibly pleased with what we jointly created.

We still have to finishing adding the risers to the stairs so that people are not able to accidentally lose their foot underneath a stair. Also, after we put up walls to the left and right of the stairs we will try staining the stairs with the same Golden Pecan stain we used on the wood floors upstairs. Hopefully they look good. If not, we will carpet the stairs to match the basement.

Photos

Cost

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