Building Stairs

I consider myself a decent carpenter. I can hold my own with a saw, I know which end of a tape measure to use, and I’ve only glued my fingers together once. But up until now, I’d never built a set of stairs. And honestly, how hard could it be? It’s just a bunch of boards going up at an angle, right?

Wrong. So very wrong.

Naturally, I started where all great DIY disasters begin—Google. I read articles, scrolled forums, and stared at diagrams until my eyes crossed and my herb tea went cold. Nothing made sense. It was like reading IKEA instructions written by a medieval mathematician.

So I turned to YouTube, the place where regular people explain things in plain English, often while holding a coffee cup and being barked at by their dogs. That’s where I found a video from Lowes, and let me tell you—if a picture’s worth a thousand words, that video was worth a thousand brain cells I didn’t even know I had. Suddenly, it all started making sense!

Armed with this newfound wisdom and a healthy dose of overconfidence, I cut the stringers. Carefully. Slowly. Nervously. But hey, they looked right, and two of them are officially up and holding! Tomorrow, I’ll put up the third one and maybe even slap on a few treads—if the good Lord’s willing and the drill battery holds out.

Now, before you ask, no, there is not a second floor in the barn yet. There’s just a big ol’ beam the stairs are currently attached to. So yes, right now we’ve got stairs to nowhere. Which honestly feels fitting, since our house still has the infamous “door to nowhere” upstairs—just waiting on that balcony we swore we’d build in 2009.

It’s nice to know the barn and the house are keeping things consistent. One has a door to nowhere. The other has stairs to it.

Maybe someday we’ll connect all these architectural ambitions and make a real second floor. Until then, at least I know how to build the stairs... even if I don’t know where they’re going.

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