I’m a complete newbie when it comes to building stairs so I thought I would evaluate some of these stair building sites to see if anyone can provide me with an explanation that would allow me to do this myself. So I typed in “building stairs” in google to see who was number 1. Survey says - askthebuilder.com. I went to the page at the following url: http://www.askthebuilder.com/215_Building_Stairs.shtml.


At this web page, Tim answers a letter from Tony on how to build interior stairs. On a home improvement/do-it-yourself web site, I like a step by step guide with each step clearly separated from the others (to the extent that this is possible). Tim’s letter format seems confusing. Why not block off step 1 and then block off all the other steps? At askthebuilder.com I have to parse through the text and try to separate the steps myself.

Making it more confusing are the google ads littered all over the page. Is Tim really interested in me learning how to build stairs or just making money off of random clicks? Tim makes the ads the main focus of the page which takes me away from what I’m hear to do - learn how to build stairs.

I see where certain words have been made into links. These appear to go back to a page where Tim is selling ebooks on the process. I find this further distracting - what about building stairs?

Let’s see if I can break out the different steps involved according to Tim:

1 - draw cross section of existing staircase
2 - get vertical distance between each step (measure from where to where?)
3 - get vertical distance between first and last steps (same question)
4 - get the vertical distance between each floor level
5 - measure the depth of each tread (aren’t they all the same?)
6 - note gaps between each side stringer (how do I do this?)
7 - note where side stringers touch bottom floor and sub-floor header (maybe I can do this?)
8 - if I’m lucky stair tread depth and stair height will be consistent (what if I’m not?)
9 - take cardboard and make a stair angle guide to copy top and bottom stair stringer cuts and position of treads (ok, I think I got that but you are starting to lose me)
10 - take the cardboard cutout and perform some measuring trick (ok, I need pictures and we ain’t got them)10 steps and you lost me Tim. Right about this point, Tim offers his stair building ebook complete with pictures. Wow! What a coincidence! $20 will get me there. Perhaps I will pick one up and review it because the web site ain’t going to get my stairway to heaven.

______________________________

Tim Carter said,

ON MARCH 25TH, 2007 AT 8:12 PM
This is a rely to the newbie who commented on my column about Building Stairs.

First, I appreciate your comments and criticism. After reading you comments, I went back and adjusted my column Summary. Here is an excerpt: “….It is impossible to describe the step-by-step process in the column below, because the newspapers across the land that run my column have a specific word count or column length I must hit each week. There simply was not enough room in the column to explain the entire process.”

I recognized immediately after writing the column that a better step-by-step guide had to be produced. I thought I could write it in a day. Boy, was I wrong. It took two weeks to try to distill the process I can do nearly blindfolded into words that a rookie could follow.

As for the Google AdSense and underlined links at AsktheBuilder.com, this is how I am able to provide all of the thousands of free columns for people like you to read. I have tens of thousands of hours invested in writing the content at AsktheBuilder.com, and I have to support my family in some method.

I tried doing a paid Premium content version of AsktheBuilder.com, and it was a miserable failure. People want the information for free. I understand that. My feeling is that if I am giving you the content for free, it seems reasonable that you might put up with some ads - ads that just might contain a solution to your problem.

This approach is by no means new. Network television has been free for nearly 60 years. The trouble is, the programming gets interrupted by ads.

[tags]building stairs, stair stringer calculator, stair building, stair treads, rise run, stair stringer spreadsheet[/tags]

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