Measure twice, cut three or four times

(Almost) naked staircase

When we left off yesterday, I had just finished removing all the carpeting, step by step (right).

As much as I wish I could dispense with the carpet entirely, it's not going to happen. The treads are extremely unlovely 2x12 pine with rough bullnoses cut into both edges and riddled with staples holding down the carpet underlayment. Not only is staining them out of the question (and I don't want painted steps), but the treads are captured in rather loose mortise slots in the stringers that can only be disguised by carpet. It is possible to get thin hardwood treads to cover pine treads – and they look pretty nice – but I'd be looking at at least $600-$700 to do that, which isn't in the budget.

So... the carpet pieces will be reused to cover the treads once I've gotten the risers installed.

About those risers. Here's my plan for inserting them:

Retrofitting the staircase with risers, cross-section (rough sketch, not to scale)

I need to slice off the rear bullnose on each stair (see upper stair in sketch), then fit a board in each opening, nailed or screwed through the riser into the back end of each tread and through the tread above into the top of the riser. Then I'll recarpet each tread from the back edge at the bottom of the riser to the front edge and down around the bullnose (which isn't as long as this unscaled sketch implies). Actually, I'm going to experiment to see if I can attach the riser directly to the rear bullnose and skip the step of slicing them off – the carpet would cover the small dip at the back of the tread – but I suspect it will leave the front bullnose extending too far.

That is, I'll experiment once I get a board cut to the correct length. I measured the the distance between the stringers, which looked to be 35-1/4", maybe a tad less. I marked the length on a 1x8 board and marked the cutting line with my speedsquare. A quick pass with my handy-dandy Craftsman Nextec lithium-battery-powered 3-1/4" power saw and I took the board in to try it in an opening. It started into place then jammed. Too long, apparently. I took it back out on the deck and shaved a bit off the end. Still wouldn't go into place. Rinse and repeat... okay, this is getting frustrating. I remeasured between the stringers, and remeasured the board. It should fit, dammit.

Unless... something isn't square? I know the board ends are square. Which leaves the opening between the stringers and steps. I got my speedsquare and set it flush against the bottom of the tread, with the top corner against the stringer. And there's the bottom of the square, almost 1/4" away from the stringer.

               

Just a bit out of square

Checking the other side confirmed it: the opening is a parallellogram (right) instead of a rectangle. I haven't checked every step yet, but so far it looks like the whole staircase is slightly racked to one side (but not as much as the parallelogram pictured, thankfully). If so, then I'm going to have to cut each board a couple of degrees out of square on each end to match the openings; the discrepancy is way too much to solve by simply cutting the boards short.

I think I need a miter saw...

Downstairs, Downstairs

When I bought my house, I didn't think much about the fact that the coat closet was two rooms away from the front door, next to the downstairs bathroom and master bedroom. Or that the only linen closet was upstairs. I put up a peg rack by the front door for a couple of in-season jackets; crowded the rest of my coats and jackets into my bedroom closet, along with bedding, blankets, and bath towels; and put free-standing shelves in the coat closet to house hand towels and washcloths, backup toiletries and my toilet paper supply, the vacuum cleaner, and assorted hats, scarves, and gloves.

That was almost twelve years ago. I long since started hankering for a coat closet near the front door to take the pressure off the bedroom closet, and I decided several years ago just what I wanted to do about it: close in the space under the stairs. As you can see in these photos I took before moving in, there's a ton of space there. The coat closet will go in the high end, and there can be more storage under the lower end – a dedicated cupboard for the vacuum cleaner (my current one won't fit in the old coat closet) comes to mind.

I have never used the "breakfast bar", and want to at least partially close off the opening from the kitchen so I can install some normal-height upper cabinets to replace the short, high cabinets that are nearly useless. So walling in the section behind the staircase fits right into my plans for the kitchen.

Open risers

Something that's hard to see in the old photos, but is clear in a current one (at right), is that the staircase has open risers, with the stair treads individually wrapped in carpeting. This, unfortunately, is not conducive to using the space for a closet, as dust and debris from the stairs drops into the space (not to mention that you wouldn't want this view into a closet). The need to close in the risers is one of the many circumstances that have so far kept my coat closet from making the transition from wish list to reality.

Until now. I have finally taken the first step toward modifying the staircase: removing the carpet from the stairs so I can install risers. The photo at right shows the staircase with the carpet removed from two treads in the middle of the run. (They were the easiest to get to.) This was a fairly strenuous procedure; the carpet on each step was secured underneath with two rows of staples along the cut edges, requiring the vigorous application of a small prybar once a corner could be located to start the process.

Carpet fastened on bottom side of stair treads

I couldn't just slice the carpet off with a utility knife, because I'm going to need to use the pieces to recover the treads once I've installed the risers. More on that in the next installment.