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History and pitfalls of baluster spacing
comments (0) August 28th, 2008 in Blogs
Kevin Ireton, editor-at-large
1 user recommends
The typical spacing between balusters on a staircase used to be about 6 in. I’m pretty sure this dimension was used because small children could stick their heads between the balusters, but their ears would catch when they tried to pull their heads back out. Hence, the staircase served as a kind of day-care center when you could safely park your kids while you did housework or ran errands. Much to the dismay of many parents, the building code now stipulates that balusters be installed such that a 4-in.-dia. sphere cannot pass between them.
I spent last weekend installing balusters on my winder staircase. It’s a
closed-stringer stair, which means when you look at it from the side, you can’t
see the treads and risers. They’re hidden by the stringer. The balusters are
seated in a grooved (or plowed) shoe rail that caps the stringers, rather than
being mortised into the treads. (In the old days, balusters were dovetailed
into treads, and the mitered tread returns covered the joint.) I built
closed-stringer stairs because this style was typical for the period and size
of my house, a fact I determined after exhaustive research (meaning I flipped
through two books and looked at the pictures).
The
handrail on my stair also has a groove in it, so the balusters, which are
square, get seated in the groove, top and bottom. The spaces between are filled
with thin strips of wood called fillet pieces. Once you’ve calculated the
proper spacing, installing the balusters is a pretty straightforward job,
assuming that the rails are exactly parallel to the stringers and that the
newels are perfectly plumb. Of course, I’m lousy at math, my rails are close to parallel, and my newels are a little better than plumb. So installing
balusters was more of a challenge.
I got them mostly done. Bob had given me two bits of advice that proved useful. He
said to resist the temptation, after calculating the space between balusters,
to set up stop blocks on the miter saw and cut all the balusters and fillets at
once. No matter how careful you are, he explained, things start creeping off
the layout, and errors accumulate.
Bob also said to step back often and look at the stairs from a few feet away:
“You’ll spot things you can’t see when your face is 12 in. away.” I followed
this advice and stepped back after installing the first baluster, which is a
good thing because it was in the wrong place. I had screwed up the math when I
tried to calculate the length of the fillet pieces based on horizontal distance
between balusters. I was glad to catch the mistake before I got any farther.
The rest of the job went OK until I nailed in the last baluster. Because the
newel post was in the way, I held the nail gun at a different angle. Whoops.
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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