Got back on my circular stairs last week and got four of them done and the railing put back in that first section.
This week, I had my brother with me and we started on the curve section with the pie stairs.
Removing this second of railing makes me wonder what I've gotten myself into.
Every phase has been a learning experience.
No way am I going to be able to charge the time that I have involved in this not even half.
No price was ever set. I could theoretically charge 6 grand for the work on this set of stairs but, if I was asked for a bid or an actual price, I would have said $2500, so no way would I go over that in good concience.
The railing part of my time is 4 or 5 times more that I could have ever guessed. Allignment is the problem because the carpenter that constructed these fit them like a machinist, not a carpenter. The wood parts shrunk after he installed the railing, so the wood is now press fit over each of the metal baulister supports.
My brother and I have 4 hours or more removing the curved section of the railing. I even went home to get my large compressor and my CP Air chisel to slide off a very tight wood to wood support section. It's like separating a wheel bearing race if that helps my description.
In the front right corner of the pie stairs, there is a 12" section of 3/8" threaded rod that holds the lower tread to the one above it.
You can sit in this image, on the right the stairs removed and the yellow shows the threaded rod position. On the left you can see the baluster holder made of steel tubing. The threaded rod goes down through that steel tubing, through the step, through the next steel tubing, then through the step below it what has a nut and washer clamping them all together.
When you remove an upper step, the step below it is now flopping around with no support. This is where the fun begins,.
Before moving or removing these steel brackets, my laser is back in use, projecting the angles and positions of these brackets onto the walls where I mark them with blue tape.
On the bright side, each step has theaded rod in the front and rear making positioning virtually guaranteed.
Each of the baulisters need to drop squarely inside those square steel brackets when we set the railing into place.
Imagine carrying a 7 foot wide curved railing with 11 baulisters dangling from it, then lowering them all down inside the square brackets. I know it's going to take me, my brother and the homeowner to pull this off.
Two holding the railing, and one person squaring the tubular steel so the baulisters will drop inside them, one, by one, by one.
Customers are fantastically patient. This is one of those learning experiences I will never see or need ever again. I guess it's a learning challenge.
In the image, I drew in yellow where the threaded rods go. There's a nut and washer on each end. One on the underside of the lower step, the other is down inside the square steel tubing. That's the green arrow on the left.
Its gonna work, but what a pain.
