Stringing along

The Laurel and Hardy rebuild chugs along.  Two words - the stringer.  I showed in an earlier post how the entire center portion of the stringer was made from a twisted piece of wood.  When I was taking off the treads the tip of each stringer on the right side would fall off.  Honey thought it had to be something I was doing so he gave it a try.  Guess whaaaatt.... it was not just me. (No gloating here, hee hee)

Our ever so wonderful builders had broken the tip off of every single one.  Some of them had a feeble gluing attempt made as repair, some had a nail, and some staples.  Augh!!  So we cleaned each one and guled and screwed them back together.

And then because the new treads are one inch thick and the old ones were two inches thick there was a gap in the baserail that would show.  So I measured out the angle of the baserail - uhm  hello 10th grade geometry, wowza - and cut 8 little triangles of wood to fill the gap.  I had to work them in between the stringer, glue them, and then tape them to hold them while they dried.



Since these will be painted, after they dried overnight I spackled and sanded them.  I forgot to take pictures of this step, but since I still have to do all of the upper stairs the same way.  There unfortunately will be plenty of photo ops later.  Augh!!

And then to top it off , none of the stringers were level

Break out the new dremel tool - this has been the handiest tool in this project!



Scrape and measure with the level, repeat, repeat , repeat.  Oh yeah, and repeat!!

But now we have a nice level, sturday, and safe base for our new treads!!  Woo hoo!!

Happy DIY'ing!!

Susan