Finishing a Stair Case

We've lived in our house for almost exactly four years now. There are a few things that didn't get done before we moved in and finishing the stairs down to the basement is one of them. I'm not sure what motivated me to start working on them, but I started last weekend and was able to finish them up today.

As you can see from this photo, the treads were just plywood. I took this photo after installing the trim down the sides of the stairs last weekend. When I did that, I made templates for both the tops and bottoms out of cardboard then scrap plywood. They helped a lot by giving me the opportunity to fuss with the plywood rather than the $40(each!) 1x10s I was using for the final trim. With the prep, template making, and installation, it took the better part of a day to get these installed.
I bought the rest of the supplies yesterday from the Home Depot. I used pre-cut pine treads and 1x8 pre-primed trim. I urethaned the treads outside yesterday so that they'd be ready to go today. I spent almost an hour this morning getting the materials, tools, etc. laid out before I started and boy, am I glad I did. By the time I started, everything was at hand, which made the work go much quicker than I thought it would.
Here are the steps I followed for each tread/riser pair.

1. Measured the tread and cut it to length.


2. Measured the riser and cut it to the correct length and width.


3. Drilled two pocket holes on the bottom of the riser.


4. Attached the riser to the tread with pocket screws. This basically made them into a single unit.


5. Removed the tread/riser pair and applied a healthy dose of construction adhesive to the stringers.


6. Put the tread/riser pair in place.


7. Screwed the tread to the stringers from below with two pocket screws per stringer. This really drew the tread down.


8. Nailed the riser to the stringer (from the front) with finish nails.


9. Repeat

There were 12 steps. The whole thing took about 5 hours, which I didn't think was that bad.

Here's the final product. I'm quite happy with how it came out.

A Quick Easel

Elizabeth asked me to build her an easel the other day. She wanted to set up an art studio on her room so I figured I'd give it a try. It's not very complicated. I cut a rough-cut 2x6 I had lying around into 3 pieces, cut the outer two ends at an angle (I just free handed it on the table saw) and bolted the three legs together.

Turns out, she wanted a table-top-sized easel, so she was a little surprised when I hauled this monster up to her room but she took it in stride and starting painting immediately. I guess it just goes to show how two people can talk about the same thing but at the same time can be talking about completely different things. (In the software biz, we call it agreeing on the requirements!)
Once again, this is one of those projects that I was able to do with materials I had on-hand.