This evening, we will journey to the Land of Menards, where lumber is cheap and you have to load it yourself. The objective: Get just enough pressure treated wood for the basement stair framing, since we now know (and generally always have) that the stairs are shot and just need to be rebuilt. In addition, the stairs leave such a small amount of headroom at the intermediate landing (which actually goes outside on the side of the house) and going down the last run to the basement that something must be done.
In looking at ways to make that extremely small space work a little better, I've come up with a plan. It probably doesn't meet code, but I'm most certain a) the existing set-up isn't near close, and b) the new set-up is about as close as I can get to "code-worthy" and functional without breaking out my visa card. It just wouldn't be worth wasting money on such a limited use thing, such as the basement stairs. Head room wasn't at a premium back in "the day," just like 1/2 bath. See below:
Instead of a square landing, we're going to introduce a kind of odd-shaped landing with an extra stair cut into it. That will allow the lower run of the stairs to clear the completely inadequate headroom almost at about 6'-0". Code is 6'-8", so we're close. Close enough. The framing will be simple, because we have to introduce a couple of extra 4x6 posts, onto which the landing as well as the bottom and top of the stringers can attach. All of the lumber will pe pressure treated, which means these days you need to use extra good, special screws. I use Menards premium deck screws, which are about $20 a box. The strange treating method will cause virtually anything else short of stainless steel or tripple coated galvanized to disentegrate over time. Not good with a structural component.Since I am such an architect and CAD geek, I like to draw everything I'm about to do in great detail. I like to put all of the members together and king of figure it out really accurately on paper before I ever get in the field. That's just me, because you KNOW that once you're in the field things change. But it's better than winging it. First was the upper section of the stairs to the landing. I had to field verify the landing height, which needed to correspond with the exterior stair threshold location. Custom stringers would be required, although I tried to keep it on even dimensions, such as an 11" rise and a 9" run.
These will help in building out the stringers from a stock 8' 2 x 12:
On the stringers I'm going to install 5/4" treated decking in lieu of plywood or other typical stair tread material. Since these go to the basement and don't have to look all too pretty, I figure 5/4 would be an easy, cheap maintenance free material, which is also easy to remove if necessary. I remember having to remove my 2 x 12 tread in my existing house to get something in the basement once.
With all of this, and the help of my co-worker Kurt (for a price unfortunately), we should be able to knock the stairs out in a couple of evenings.
