Skip to main content

I'm the Stair Master!


Friday


The skirt trim needs to be installed before the stairs; that keeps the pretty finish cuts much simpler.

I spent the whole day carefully measuring and cutting these boards. They're ridiculously expensive pieces of wood; I didn't want to make any mistakes.





Success was getting far enough I could put a first coat of finish on them.


Saturday

Two more coats of finish on the skirts.

While those dried, I installed the last two riser spacers.


I rounded the exposed edge of the car decking floor to help it fit in with the round noses of the oak stair treads that will lead up to it.



I mowed the weeds.


And I saw this little guy. I didn't know we had mantises here! The praying worked; he or she escaped the mower.


Sunday

The skirts are dry, so they got installed.



I made pieces of trim that go where treads and risers need to abut them, and got them finish coated.

I cut and installed most of the risers, excepting the two that should be fit over the landing flooring.


This one riser was warped, which called for an elaborate clamp while the glue dried.


Here are the completed risers on the top section of stairs. You can also see the trim pieces I installed near the top step so the riser could be fit neatly between them.



Tomorrow Doug returns to sand and finish the rest of the floors, which will include installing the stair treads.


Tuesday


Doug sent these photos of the upstairs floors. Looking good!

















Comments

  1. JSeptember 14, 2022 at 9:22 AM

    What a giant puzzle. Nice woodworking. Measure a dozen times, cut once! Congrats!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The trim finishing journey begins

The last time we installed wood trim (almost two years ago!), we sanded and cut the material inside the cabin (it was winter) and installed it unfinished. Finishing it meant taping everything off and applying three coats of finish in place. Removing the masking was frustrating (the finish glued it to the wall in places), and in other places the finish still got where it didn't belong. Now the cabin is full of nice, finished floors, cabinets, and counters. It's not a shop. So this time, I'm sanding and pre-finishing all the boards outdoors. Thankfully, there's still pretty nice weather; that black tarp garage heats up pretty well when the sun's out. Today I got the first batch of wood sanded and a coat of finish applied. Christina installed eight receptacles in the kitchen and great room. My mom came up to enjoy the warm ambiance of the not-yet-active wood stove.
1 comment
Read more

It is DONE!

The final inspection was today. This guy is Levi, the county inspector, and as you can see, we passed! He only had two questions for me. One was about the energy efficiency credits and the blower door test, for which I had the compensating paperwork for the low-flow faucets already prepared. The second was asking for a smoke detector outside the bedroom; I pointed up and he saw that we already had one tucked into the alcove. And that was that! I got up at 5am to be certain I'd be here before the inspector, and I was ... by about five hours. In that time, I took another truckload of tool buckets down to the storage container, then picked up all the floor protection in the great room and vacuumed and mopped. It's glowing! Then I went back down to the storage container to get a hammer so I could glue in 32 wood plugs to cover the screws for the french doors. I fought with installing the screens, but the frames are too big! The manufacturer said "yeah we don't even make th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Odds and ends

I made progress on a bunch of little things today.  I painted a fencepost in 12" segments and pounded it in at the property line, where the outdoor camera can see it. Now we can measure the snow accumulation. I worked on finishing up almost-complete receptacle branch circuits. The first one I worked on was a little mystery: all the receptacles were installed, but the power didn't reach past a certain point in the line. After some investigation with a wire tracer and watching through the videos we took before covering the walls, I worked out what had happened: two receptacles shared a stud bay, facing into opposite rooms. The plan had been to bring power up to one box, jump over to the other box, and continue back down to the crawlspace to the next box. We forgot the jumper. I couldn't fish a wire between the boxes myself, so that repair waits. Upstairs, installing two receptacles completed the branch. The bathroom vent hole in the tile backer board was a skosh too small. ...
Post a Comment
Read more