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Happy landings, and the stairs are finished
comments (0) September 12th, 2008 in Blogs
Kevin Ireton, editor-at-large
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Well, I finally finished my staircase, and I’m as pleased as the perfectionist, son-of-a-surgeon, editor of Fine Homebuilding is likely ever to be with his own work. That starting newel is still twisted. The winder treads squeak because I didn’t glue the cove molding when I it nailed under the nosings. And of course, there’s that tiny hole in the handrail where the errant nail emerged.
The stairs come close to meeting the current building code. Fortunately you get a little slack if you’re tying to shoehorn new stairs into a 200-year-old house. The rise and run are legal and comfortable. But the winder treads aren’t quite six inches at their narrowest, and there’s a headroom issue with the summer beam at the bottom of the stairs.
The design of the stairs departs a bit from tradition. Typically in a small cape of this vintage, the main handrail running up the stairs would have died into the ceiling. But I added a dormer and opened up a narrow stairwell to let more light into the front room and entry. It’s a compromise that would make a true restorationist’s teeth ache, but I’m happy with it.
On any trim job, you can judge a carpenter’s work by how the moldings transition or terminate, especially where unusual or unexpected conditions are encountered. And an old house offers up plenty of unusual conditions.
The photos above are a look at some that I encountered and how, for better or worse, I elected to handle them.
The skirtboard and the baseboard should have been on the same plane, so I had to punt. Bob says I “mooshed” it, but thinks I mooshed it pretty well. The inside skirtboard dies neatly into the post at the base of the stair, but the overhanging cap molding was a problem. I treated it the same as the window stool above it.
I worried about the collision of the window trim and the skirtboard, but didn’t have much control over the location of either one. I was lucky that the stool was high enough to overhang the casing and return cleanly to the wall. Skirtboards, treads, and risers all converge at the corner post. Note the inch-wide strip of post showing below the tread. I figured a little paint was all I needed here.
There’s an exposed beam at the top of the stairs that looks a little funky, but I like it. It’s worth noting that 200 years ago people took pains to hide the beams, wrapping them with pine boards, but now we want to see them. I planned this as carefully as I could, given that I had to locate the door to the basement just below the termination of the upstairs newel post. Still, I cut it pretty close.
posted in: Blogs
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About this blog
As the editor of Fine Homebuilding, I spend my weekdays trying to produce a magazine that will satisfy 300,000 of the most demanding builders, both professional and amateur. As the owner of a 200-year old Cape in Connecticut’s Litchfield Hills, I spend weekends working on my house.
Each activity invariably informs, and complicates, the other. In this blog, I’ll offer observations from both worlds -- publishing and building -- with the hope of providing some useful or at least entertaining insights.
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