Tarkblog

Recent carpet removal had left us with a minor issue.

Most ominous, one of the stairs on our staircase was split, needing to be replaced. My FIL was here the other day and he looked at it, but concluded that it was probably going to be a tricky job due to the fact that the stair was jointed into the railing on the side. Getting the old one out: easy. New one in: hard. So we deferred.

My handyman was here the other day, and he took a look and said it would be incredibly easy to fix. So, I set out to do it.

First things first, I had to buy a replacement stair. A few measurements and a trip to the hardware store later, and I found an exact replacement. It’s a 1 inch thick oak stair tread. I had to cut it to the proper width to fit the staircase, though. This wasn’t too bad either, but I don’t have a table saw, just a circular saw, so keeping the line straight is a bit tricky. I think I did a pretty good job.

You can tell we haven’t yet painted the risers on the stairs the usedto be covered in carpet.

Next step was to remove the old stair. Using a pry bar, I loosened it up. It came out without much trouble.

Old stair and new stair.

Now, the new stair didn’t just go right into place. No, the old stair had a small notch carved into the back of it that allowed it to slide into a groove in the back of the step. I had to replicate this somehow, using my circular saw, some precision cutting, and a chisel. It took a little while. In fact, I didn’t even finish it the first night because I got tired of working on the project (and needed some finishing nails from the hardware store anyway to complete the project). So I gave up for the night.

Next day, after work I returned to the project. I finished up the notch, and tried it out, and it fit beautifully. A quick stop by the hardware store to pick up the proper nails, and 6 nails later I had that bad boy installed in place.

All we gotta do now is run the sander back over the stairs and get them ready for refinishing.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 7:33 pm and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.