Spent 5 years drafting dims wrong on stair treads before a framer set me straight

I always added 1 inch to the tread depth thinking it gave the stringers more room. An old framer in Spokane ran his finger along my print and said, 'you're making me cut an extra inch off every tread, son.' Turns out I was doubling the nosing allowance the whole time. Anybody else ever get a field guy to point out something obvious you'd been doing forever?

2 comments

2 Comments

hannah38516d ago

That framer saved you a ton of headache. I did the same thing for two years with riser heights before a site superintendent pointed out I was adding an inch to every rise for no reason. He just looked at my plans and said "you got 8 inch rises here, but my guys are cutting 7 inch boards." Felt like a complete idiot. Made me start double checking my basics with a tape measure on every new build. Sometimes you just need someone to call out the obvious stuff you missed.

martinez.karen16d ago

Hannah, I gotta push back on that a little. You say it's all about "someone to call out the obvious stuff you missed" but I don't think it's that simple. Sometimes the field guys are used to working a certain way and they'll tell you your dims are wrong just because THEY don't like cutting it that way. I've had framers tell me my risers were off when I checked the math three times and the stairs fit perfect after they installed them. The framer you mentioned might have been right in THAT case, but it's dangerous to just take every field guy's word as gospel without verifying yourself. I see too many designers letting contractors talk them into bad details just because they feel intimidated on site. You gotta trust your own numbers sometimes.