Amateur carpenters who have laid out the cuts in a stair stringer (the zig-zag structural support for the steps) know the queasy feeling that bubbles up at the prospect of this job. There’s the simple ...

I feel it’s important for you to understand the structure of a set of stairs before you get out your saw and framing square.

To lay out a set of stair stringers from scratch requires a little math, but not much. Equally important is some quiet time to run the numbers and at the same time to think about the construction ...

Picture a stair slope in your mind to estimate about a 40-degree slope and guess at a landing point. Rest any straight piece of deck lumber on the deck and level it over to the landing point. Measure ...

I need to build some simple outdoor steps to replace ones that fell apart and rotted (even though they were made with treated lumber). I’m fairly handy and have a decent grasp of the math but would ...

You probably give little thought to the stairs you go up or down to reach different levels of your home, deck or patio. I’ll wager that if I handed you a measuring tape, a framing square, a pencil and ...