Amateur carpenters who have laid out the cuts in a stair stringer (the zig-zag structural support for the steps) know the queasy feeling that bubbles up at the prospect of this job. There’s the simple ...

To lay out a set of stair stringers from scratch requires a little math, but not much. Equally important is some quiet time to run the numbers and at the same time to think about the construction ...

Picture a stair slope in your mind to estimate about a 40-degree slope and guess at a landing point. Rest any straight piece of deck lumber on the deck and level it over to the landing point. Measure ...

Late last fall I got an email from a friend, John, looking for advice on building a new set of stairs going down into the basement of the house he’s renovating. John is pretty handy with tools, but ...

Here is a picture of the side of a staircase. It’s called a stair stringer. Calculate the area of the side of the stringer that is facing you. Look for repeated shapes in it. Rhys has 8 of these ...