Spent 6 hours fighting a staircase that should have taken 2

I had a straight run of stairs last Wednesday, nothing fancy. But the top nosing was cut 3/4 inch too short by the framers back when the house was built. I ended up having to hand cut all the overlap pieces and shim the tack strips to get the drop right. Six hours for one set of stairs. Has anyone else dealt with a framing flaw that just ate up your whole day?

2 comments

2 Comments

knight.taylor6d agoRising Star

AND that right there is the real lesson - sometimes you gotta stop fighting the stairs and just demo a section to start fresh. I've learned the hard way that trying to shim and patch a bad framing job usually just wastes more time than a clean redo. Next time you spot a nosing gap that bad, just cut the bottom tread out and reset it, you'll save yourself four hours easy.

matthew8646d ago

Funny enough the same thing happened to me but on a remod where the old stairs didn't match the new floor height at all. I ended up ripping out the whole bottom tread and rebuilding it from scratch just to get the rise consistent. Sometimes you're better off cutting your losses and redoing a section than fighting a bad framing mistake for hours.