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Got cocky cutting stair stringers on a remodel in Tulsa and lost 3 hours fixing my own mess
I was doing a deck rebuild on a house in Tulsa back in March, and I figured the stringers would be quick since I've cut maybe 60 sets over the years. I measured the total rise at 41 inches, did the math in my head for a 7 1/4 inch rise, and started marking the 2x12s without checking anything twice. Got all three cut, set them in place, and the top step sat almost an inch and a half high. Turns out I had rounded my rise to the nearest quarter instead of doing the actual division, and that tiny error stacked up across six steps. I stood there staring at 90 bucks of lumber I couldn't reuse and just felt dumb. Pulled the stringers out, got my framing square and the little stair gauges out of the truck, and did the whole thing over slow, marking each tread and riser one at a time. Took three extra hours but they dropped in with the top landing dead level, and the homeowner never knew. Now I keep the gauges clamped on the square for every single mark, no exceptions, even on jobs that look easy. Anybody else got a shortcut that bit them and what do you do now to keep it from happening again?
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shane_williams418d ago
Felt dumb over $90 of lumber, huh? Cheaper than my mistakes, that's for sure.
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