Staircase started, and sanding, sanding, sanding......

Monday, 31^st December 2012

The Fairfield – Construction day 2

By the time I went to bed the house looked a bit like a drunken sailor :-)    – leaning at an odd angle and all skew-wiffy.  So I didn’t take a photo.  This morning I took it apart again and sanded the pieces carefully by hand, to get a reasonable finish on each side.  To my surprise it came up quite well.  And after all the practice I have had on The Arthur, Coventry Cottage and The Magnolia (which actually was the worst of them all), I have become quite adept at avoiding splinters in my hands.  A skill which apparently, like riding a bicycle, one never loses.  I never learned to ride a bicycle – my parents were convinced that I would fall off and break something so wouldn’t let me have one; but I sure learned to avoid splinters and apparently I haven’t forgotten! 

The sanding was actually a ‘fill in’ as I was gluing the risers onto one of the stringers for the staircase and waiting for them to dry before I added a few more.  I found it too awkward to do it the way the instructions said, so I lay one stringer on a flat surface and stood the riser upright against it, propped up while it dried.  

First few risers added, held in place with other risers while the glue  'grabs'

All risers are now added

This worked quite successfully.  Think of a comb standing on edge with all the teeth sitting up in the air and you get a bit of the picture.  I only did a couple of risers at a time, any more tended to be too many to prop up successfully.  As always, I used tacky glue for half the length then wood glue for the rest.  I then let them all dry.

When the glue had dried for about an hour I matched up the other stringer.  This was trickier and took a bit of fiddling but wasn’t as difficult as managing the two stringers at once to glue the risers onto.  I first did the top and bottom ones and a couple about 1/3 and 2/3 of the way down, let them grab a bit, then glued the rest on. 

Then I left the whole thing alone to dry thoroughly for the rest of the day, with a bit of masking tape to hold them in place.

The plan is that I will paint this part of the stairs and stain the treads, which is why I haven’t gone ahead and added the treads as well.