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 ...

You probably give little thought to the stairs you go up or down to reach different levels of your home, deck or patio. I’ll wager that if I handed you a measuring tape, a framing square, a pencil and ...

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 ...

You probably give little thought to the stairs you go up or down to reach different levels of your home, deck or patio. I’ll wager that if I handed you a measuring tape, a framing square, a pencil and ...

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 ...