“And the steps trembled under my foot…”

It is unlike­ly that you feel com­fort­able when the stairs in the house creak and the steps sag. Every­one wants it to be beau­ti­ful, strong and durable. ATnowa­days stairs, com­pa­ra­ble in size to the cre­ations of the fathers of archi­tec­ture, are made of rein­forced con­crete or met­al. The sto­ry will be about a steel struc­ture lined with wood and dry­wall

So, the weld­ing work is com­plet­ed, the met­al frame of the stairs is installed in its place and cov­ered with a lay­er of pro­tec­tive primer. From below, it is tight­ly screwed to the con­crete floor with the help of anchor bolts, from above it freely rests on the end of the open­ing in the ceil­ing. The weight of the struc­ture reach­es one and a half tons. In place of the steps for ease of move­ment and work, you can tem­porar­i­ly put wood­en blocks.

Metal and wood are one

What are the advan­tages of steel over rein­forced con­crete? Mod­ern stairs are not lim­it­ed to sim­ple geo­met­ric shapes. As a rule, they are struc­tures with many spans and turns at var­i­ous angles, part of which is a com­plex fence made of forged met­al, tem­pered or spe­cial glass, wood, stone and oth­er mate­ri­als. Such stairs must have increased strength in order to with­stand the weight of not only peo­ple mov­ing along them, car­ried pieces of fur­ni­ture, house­hold appli­ances, but also a mas­sive dec­o­ra­tion of the fence, rail­ings or handrails.

[1] Accord­ing to the pre-made markup, the plinth pan­el, which dec­o­rates the stairs from the side of the wall, is fixed with “liq­uid nails”, and then screwed to the wall with screws. In the same way, the pan­el is installed and attached to the stringer on the out­side of the stairs. This work is done after fin­ish­ing the steps and installing the land­ing.
[2] The assem­bly of the step begins with the fact that the ris­er is glued into the groove on the under­side of the tread with the help of “liq­uid nails”. It is con­nect­ed to the tread on which it rests with two screws 6 mm in diam­e­ter through holes drilled in the tread along the cen­ter line of the joint.
[3] The tread is installed on a met­al struc­ture and attached from below with four screws with a diam­e­ter of 6 mm through holes pre­vi­ous­ly drilled in the met­al. This is how the con­nec­tion of the tread and ris­er looks like from the end.
[4] The marked plate is cut to the desired size using a cir­cu­lar saw, the ends are fin­ished with a grinder.
Prod­ucts of a com­plex pro­file are usu­al­ly made from pre­stressed rein­forced con­crete at house-build­ing plants. Try to bring such a heavy and bulky struc­ture into a house where floors have already been installed. Most like­ly, you won’t suc­ceed. If you make such a stair­case only from wood, then it will include mas­sive and large-sized load-bear­ing ele­ments and sig­nif­i­cant­ly lim­it the choice of archi­tec­tur­al solu­tion. Met­al, on the oth­er hand, gives an impres­sive stair­case in size light­ness and del­i­ca­cy.

Any tech­nol­o­gy has its own specifics. The pecu­liar­i­ty of assem­bling the stairs on a met­al stringer is that when weld­ing the sup­port­ing frame at the instal­la­tion site, it is very dif­fi­cult to ensure the required dimen­sion­al accu­ra­cy. There­fore, care­ful mea­sure­ment of the frame and fit­ting of parts is required. The ide­al option is to per­form all work relat­ed to met­al pro­cess­ing in the fac­to­ry and install the fin­ished prod­uct in the span. ATIn this case, the lin­ing of the sup­port­ing met­al struc­ture with wood (accord­ing tosides and top) and dry­wall, plas­tic, wood, plas­ter (bot­tom) will be less time con­sum­ing and bet­ter qual­i­ty. The weight of this struc­ture can reach sev­er­al hun­dred kilo­grams, so spe­cial atten­tion should be paid to the safe­ty of the work.

In the archi­tec­ture of pri­vate hous­es in Rus­sia at the end 90s received a rebirth of the Art Nou­veau style. The inher­ent light­ness and plas­tic­i­ty of curvi­lin­ear forms were embod­ied in the art of build­ing stairs. The struc­ture, which we will tell you about, was designed and man­u­fac­tured by spe­cial­ists from three dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies. The met­al frame was weld­ed by the crafts­men of the firm “ROST”. Join­ers JSC“LADDER” lined the frame with wood and installed a handrail, mod­eled and turned in Aus­tria. Wrought iron fence- the work of black­smiths of the com­pa­ny “RUSSIANFORGING”.

handrail- per­haps the most dif­fi­cult and time-con­sum­ing part of the stairs. Of course, you can plan out the lurid rail­ings or assem­ble them from sep­a­rate wood­en parts fit­ted to each oth­er, as is cus­tom­ary in mass pro­duc­tion. Piece­work, unpar­al­leled join­ery prod­ucts are cre­at­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. The handrail of com­plex geom­e­try is devel­oped by com­put­er mod­el­ing in three-dimen­sion­al pro­jec­tion (3D). Then they make a life-size mod­el, accord­ing to which the handrail is machined at the fac­to­ry from sol­id wood. Rotary ele­ments are made and cus­tomized accord­ing to the tem­plate. Lean­ing on such a handrail, a per­son feels that this thing was cre­at­ed for max­i­mum con­ve­nience and is a work of art, and not just part of a pro­tec­tive fence.

[5] The land­ing slab is heavy and incon­ve­nient for instal­la­tion; when fit­ting and installing it, work­ers require not only phys­i­cal strength, but also care and cau­tion.
[6] After the instal­la­tion of the steps, the embed­ded parts of the fence are installed. To do this, the nec­es­sary holes are drilled in the steps and the met­al stringer accord­ing to the pre­lim­i­nary mark­ing. Embed­ded parts are attract­ed by nuts from below.
[7] Next comes the turn of fac­ing the frame of the stairs from below with dry­wall. Sheets pre-cut to size are attached to met­al stringers with self-tap­ping screws.
[8] The plas­ter­board coat­ing is put­tied, after clean­ing the sur­face with sand­pa­per, it is primed and paint­ed with water-dis­per­sion paint using a roller.

High cladding art

Any met­al struc­ture can be lined with wood and dry­wall, even if this was not pro­vid­ed for. ATIn such cas­es, the nec­es­sary parts are weld­ed to the frame and the extra parts are removed. The method of fas­ten­ing the cladding and its con­fig­u­ra­tion is deter­mined in each spe­cif­ic case sep­a­rate­ly.

The ide­al fac­to­ry con­di­tions we men­tioned are often not avail­able. Andif the met­al struc­ture is weld­ed at the instal­la­tion site, then the load-bear­ing ele­ments of the steps must be lev­eled. It is also impor­tant to fol­low a cer­tain sequence of assem­bly and fin­ish­ing.

How is the cladding attached to the met­al struc­ture? Usu­al­ly, screws with embed­ded parts, self-tap­ping screws and “liq­uid nails” (glue) are used.

What kind of wood is prefer­able for mak­ing dif­fer­ent parts? Sol­id hard­woods are good for cladding: oak, ash, beech, maple and even birch, both stained and nat­ur­al. Glued wood, cov­ered with sev­er­al lay­ers of Bona (Swe­den) durable poly­ester var­nish, is suit­able for treads and land­ings: it does not warp or crack. The ris­ers are best made from car­pen­ter’s board, veneered with the same type of wood as the treads. The stringers and the wall are dec­o­rat­ed with plinth pan­els made of sol­id wood of the same type. From below, the stairs are usu­al­ly sheathed with dry­wall, which is then put­tied, primed and paint­ed in accor­dance with the design­er’s rec­om­men­da­tions.

[9] For embed­ded parts in the steps, you need to install sec­tions of forged fenc­ing. Then the sec­tions are weld­ed togeth­er, the weld­ing spots are hid­den by dec­o­ra­tive fit­tings.
[10] And final­ly, the handrail is mount­ed. It is laid on the steel rail of the fence and screwed to it with screws through the exist­ing holes.
[11] Part of the handrail at the place where the rail­ing turns 180 is a sep­a­rate­ly man­u­fac­tured tran­si­tion ele­ment, the work­piece of which is made with a large allowance in length. For its exact dock­ing with the con­tin­u­a­tion of the handrail, a card­board tem­plate is made.
[12] A care­ful­ly marked tran­si­tion ele­ment is sawn off by hand, the end is lev­eled with a grinder. The handrail of the next flight of stairs is installed end-to-end with the tran­si­tion ele­ment.The design of the steps, the shape of the grooves, the instal­la­tion loca­tions of the dow­els and embed­ded parts can be dif­fer­ent, they are deter­mined both by the design doc­u­men­ta­tion and by spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances dur­ing assem­bly. At the fac­to­ry, wood­en treads and ris­ers are made with an allowance for sub­se­quent fit­ting against the wall. When installed on the frame, the adja­cent part is adjust­ed. After care­ful mea­sure­ment, the treads and ris­ers are marked out, tak­ing into account the uneven­ness of the wall plas­ter and the inac­cu­ra­cies made dur­ing the weld­ing and instal­la­tion of the met­al struc­ture, after which they are sawn off to the required dimen­sions with a cir­cu­lar saw. Ends are pol­ished. The land­ing is a mas­sive wood­en slab, the dimen­sions of which (in our case 130 130 cm) deter­mined by the width of the march. Like the step blanks, it is made with a large allowance. Site instal­la­tion- a time-con­sum­ing and at the same time respon­si­ble oper­a­tion that requires pre­cise fit­ting both to the wall and to the met­al struc­ture. The fence is attached to a met­al frame, and not to a wood­en cladding. The con­nec­tion of the parts of the fence and the stringer can be mechan­i­cal (screw, clamp), weld­ed or glued. ATin this case, the forged fence is installed on embed­ded parts screwed to the stringers.

A stair­case designed and built accord­ing to all the rules of archi­tec­ture,- an expen­sive and com­plex struc­ture, the cre­ation of which is with­in the pow­er of qual­i­fied spe­cial­ists. ATthis state­ment is not dis­mis­sive of those who like to build a house with their own hands. Try it, it is pos­si­ble that you will suc­ceed.

• Source: Ideas for Your Home Magazine#29

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