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 ...

Building a deck makes for a fantastic addition to any home. But it’s not going to be much use without a good set of deck ...

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 ...

Cutting the steps, which essentially run diagonally, out of a straight board to make the supporting stringers can be pretty tricky as well. But you can use pre-cut pressure-treated stair stringers.

"You can absolutely cut a stair stringer if only you only knew the way the math works," my dad once said to me. So, long before I ever had a geometry class, I knew the math behind determining a slope.

To understand stairs, let’s talk about floors. Like many Americans, you might live in a home with a wood-floor system.

The stair treads and risers are fastened to and held firm by stringers, which are analogous to the joists under a floor. The stringers are the bones of the stairs. They’re what support you when ...