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Tuesday at a custom stair job in Portland humbled me fast | Carpenters - Free To Speak

Tuesday at a custom stair job in Portland humbled me fast

We were building this curved oak staircase for a house up in the West Hills, and I figured it would be a straightforward week. Three treads in, the stringer that I had rough cut just would not seat right. The rise was off by maybe a quarter inch on the top two steps, which sounds small but throws the whole rhythm off when you're walking down. My foreman, Dan, walked over after lunch and didn't say a word, just pulled out his old bevel gauge and re-marked the line from the actual floor measurements, not the plans. I had been trusting the site plan like it was gospel, and he showed me the subfloor had settled a half inch near the corner. We redid the cut in twenty minutes and it fit like a glove. That little fix saved us from ripping out two days of work, and I had to sit with how much time I waste assuming the prints are right. Anyone else ever get burned by trusting the blueprint over a tape measure on site?

1 comments

1 Comment

aaron_perry1mo ago

HALF an inch?" Man, that is WILD. I read that and had to put my phone down for a second. You are telling me the subfloor settled that much and the plans did not show it? That is exactly the kind of thing that makes me want to throw my clipboard in the river. I have been doing this for fifteen years and I STILL catch myself staring at a blueprint like it is the holy word, and then the tape measure laughs at me. That quarter inch stuff is brutal too, it never looks bad on paper but your feet feel it the second you step down. Dan sounds like the kind of guy who has saved more jobs with that bevel gauge than any laser level ever could. I bet you will never look at a set of prints the same way again, and honestly, that is a good thing. Those plans are a suggestion, the actual floor is the boss.