Stairway to Something

The stairs project wasn't terribly hard.  Getting the old, rotten stairs out was a pain in the rear, as you might imagine.  Tearing 4" deck screws out of redwood isn't the easiest job.

The hardest part of putting in the new stairs was getting them even.  This took a bit of careful measurement and math.  I hate math.

After getting things all even on virtual paper, it was time to get some wood and start cutting.  The stringers are 2x12" which is by far the biggest dimensional lumber I've touched to date.  And, as fate would have it, 12' boards weren't going to be long enough (by about 2") so I had to get 16'.  Those suckers are heavy and hard as hell to move.

Cutting the three stringers took a while, but I managed to get them right.

The boards that I used for treads are Trex brand.  They're a composite board made of recycled plastic, and they're tough, dense, and a bit of a pain to work with compared to normal lumber.  They'll last forever, though.

The one thing I didn't account for, though, is that the Trex boards are 1" thick, not 1.5" thick like normal dimensional lumber.  Thus, the bottom step is 1/2" too short and the top step is 1/2" too tall.  Not a huge deal, but asymmetry bugs me.

This also caused a bit of an annoyance once I got to the top, because the top  step couldn't be Trex or it wouldn't match up with the rest of the deck.  What's more, the brackets that I used to hang the stringers at the top had a flange that stuck up above the plane of the deck; I found a solution for that, though.

I used normal 2x6 decking for the top step, and set the board in place.  I banged on it with a pry bar a few times, which marked the underside where the flanges made contact.  I then took a router and cut out enough room for the flanges to sit, and screwed the top step down.

Stairs:  Done.