Stairway to ?

curt boyer

Member
Joined
Jun 8, 2007
Messages
203
Our floor guy sanded this back stair which had painted risers and yellow pine treads. The risers were finger jointed and never meant to be stained. He put a coat of stain and poly on them anyway to see what they would look like as the homeowner was away at the time. When she got back and saw the risers and asked what we could do to improve the look of the finger jointed risers. The first thing we tried carefully scribed and fit 1/4" birch ply risers. We tried several stains and got pretty close in tone and color to the treads but we couldn't match the cathedral grain of the yellow pine which was a deal breaker for the homeowner. I then suggested milling and applying yellow pine tread stock over top of the existing risers so that the grain would match.

So with perfectly scribed 1/4" birch patterns I started work on option number two. We took stock yellow pine treads cut and ripped them an 1/8" bigger than the numbered patterns. I stood the risers on edge and ran them through the tablesaw twice. As the riser height was on average 7-1/2" tall and my tablesaws capacity is 3-1/8", I had a small island of wood in the middle of the riser to be removed. I used a power plane to get close to a flush surface then I ran them through a thickness planer to dimension them to final thickness. I connected my patterns to the blanks with two way carpet tape. I then used the 1400 with a top bearing pattern bit to cut all the risers. This worked really well and produced very tight fitting risers that needed an occasional touch with a sharp block plane. We stained them and applied one coat of poly in preparation for the installation.

Because the existing risers had poly on them and I wanted to glue as well as nail the new to the old the poly had to go! Enter the RAS the most powerful sander in the world, and if used properly it could sand your head clean off! So bada bing bada boom no more poly gloom. With bare wood risers, I applied constrution adhesive and used a brad gun to fasten each riser in place. Next I applied pine scotia moulding under each tread and we were then ready for the final coats of poly. We used a furniture wax crayon to fill the nail holes. The homeowner was very happy with the end result and we were very happy because it was a time and material job!
Cheers
Curt
 

Attachments

  • image.jpg
    image.jpg
    795.7 KB · Views: 536
  • image.jpg
    image.jpg
    850.7 KB · Views: 455
  • image.jpg
    image.jpg
    886.5 KB · Views: 406
  • image.jpg
    image.jpg
    759.4 KB · Views: 377
  • image.jpg
    image.jpg
    951.6 KB · Views: 474
Curt:
Looks good.
Couldn't figure out the numbers on the risers till I read your post.
I like the idea of using the thin birch ply for template.
Tim
 
Thanks guys! Tim the Birch ply was going to be the finished product if the homeowner liked them which she didn't. We kidded her that they were very expensive templates. That's the other reason why we were happy it was a t/m job, there was a fair amount of time in fitting them. She is a good customer who let's us have fun with wood at her house. She keeps coming up with new projects to do.
Cheers
Curt
 
If I hadn't seen the 'before' pictures I never would have known that they weren't originally made like that.

To me, that's the highest praise anyone could give you.
 
A really great job, Curt.  It is always so much fun to work with a customer who is not only happy with your work, but let's you have fun along the way.  She was having fun, i am sure, just seeing how you handled the problem so handily.  Customers like that don't come along every day, but when they do, it makes going to work a situation where you are NOT going to work.  Just enjoyable all the way around.
Tinker
 
She made a good choice.  Those stairs are quite steep so there will be more toe strikes than usual.
Looks much better now and the yellow pine will handle toe strikes much better than birch ply.
 
Curt Boyer said:
Thanks guys! Tim the Birch ply was going to be the finished product if the homeowner liked them which she didn't. We kidded her that they were very expensive templates. That's the other reason why we were happy it was a t/m job, there was a fair amount of time in fitting them. She is a good customer who let's us have fun with wood at her house. She keeps coming up with new projects to do.
Cheers
Curt
You are lucky to have people like her to work for . The world needs more like her, I was always bless to have mostly good people to work for also and doing T&M work always brought out the best work in me and my company, building trust and quality takes time and sometimes material. Great job and keep up the good work. B
 
Hey curt.  Who is your floor guy down there, I know 2-3 of them near Philly.  Also, great job. ALOT of times, when matching new wood to fir or heart pine, we use an amber shellac.  I hate the stuff, but it matches that old orangie pine perfect.  Keep that in mind.  Down my way, unless they have oak or better risers, they normally get painted.  Just 3 weeks ago, I had this exact same thing happen.  We started tearing into the risers (oak) and quickly realized they were plywood.  So we did exactly what you did. Made 1/8 skins from a standard oak riser.  I used a bandsaw with a good high fence and resaw blade. 1 quick run thru the planer and they were ready to onlay.  Great work.   
 
Sam, we use a company called Vincent's Flooring in Ardmore. Their good for the meat and potatoe work but the tricky or finase stuff I like to do. Luckily there was plenty tread overhang so I went with 3/8" thickness so I could glue and nail and have enough material for future sanding. Yes a bandsaw would have been great but I just returned my friends from a long multi year borrow! Thanks for the Amber shellac advice, I had some in the truck at the time we were playing alchemy but never tried it.
 
Back
Top