Transforming Your Garage with Custom Stairs: Maple Handrail, Metal Balusters, and Newel Post Design
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- Sep 30, 2024
- 2 min read
Just because they're garage stairs doesn't mean that they shouldn't be beautiful. I was a bit concerned about whether my finish carpentry skills would be up to par when I decided to build this project myself instead of hiring a professional. But after a lot of research on YouTube (thanks Spencer Lewis of Insider Carpentry), I'd say the results speak for themselves. Every person who has come into the garage has commented on how fantastic they look, and that's really the only thing that matters, right?
Well, no. The only thing that matters is that my wife loves how they look. And she does.
This is one of those projects that I kept expecting to have problems from, but nothing significant really came up. The biggest problem was a nothing-burger with the caps of the balusters. We were told when we ordered them that I didn't need to put a channel in the bottom of the handrail to slot them into to hide the gap. Which didn't make much sense to me, but I trusted my supplier. And then sure enough when I went to final install them, they should have been installed into a slot in the bottom of the handrail to hide the gap. It's not super noticeable, and the fix is simple enough it annoys me. I can just glue thing strips to the edges of the handrails, essentially creating a channel.
As I mention in the video on the NineRings WoodCraft YouTube channel, having to scribe the top half-newel to the out-of-plumb wall was annoying, but honestly it was worse in my head than it wound up being. It's one of those reminders that sometimes overthinking a project or technique can take more time than just diving in and doing the work that needs to be done.
I'm not going to sit here and say that after one set of stairs, I'm ready to dive in and become a master stair builder. But it is good to know that if I ever had to do it again, I can do a beautiful, professional job.
Some of the tools that I used
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