Staircase Rehab Part 2

Onward and upward. Ha!

The toughest part of this job is cutting the skirts to mate with the staircase.  I’ve never done this before, so I am improvising as I go.  The outline for the  skirts was made by slipping a piece of kraft paper between the stairs and the drywall, and tracing the outline of the staircase.

The drawing was transferred to a 1/2″ x 8″ mdf board by – a pounce wheel!  (Pounce wheels are usually used by seamstresses and tailors to transfer patterns to fabric.) I love to borrow tools and techniques from unrelated crafts or disciplines to solve problems.

Here, the skirts are made from flat mdf board with a 5 1/2″ baseboard set along the top, and the existing risers are shimmed for the new hickory boards:

Nailing the hickory in place.  A squiggle of liquid nails, and 120 psi to blast the 2″ brads through the 3/4″ hickory into the shims:

The very last piece was the trickiest – I had to cut away three inches of Travertine and backer board with an angle grinder to make room for the landing tread.  The grinder puts out a horrendous amount of dust, which I tried to capture – with limited success – with the shop vac.  Here I’m checking level, square and plumb on the last riser:

It’s been a challenging project, and I’ve learned a lot of things NOT to do if I ever do this again.  😀

For instance, I should have used 12″ wide boards for the skirts so the line between the two boards (the 8″ flat stock and the 5″ baseboard) could ride higher above the tread bullnose.

Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!