Stairs Supplies and Equipment
Use the right supplies and equipment to make your customers' stairs
Stairs enhance the appeal of indoor and outdoor spaces as well as provide an important function. As a contractor, it's your job to make them look good while providing safety and sturdiness. The tools and materials for building stairs are pretty straightforward, but you should also work with your customers to ensure that you are providing them with the level of functionality and personality that they desire.Add finishing touches to the basics to customize every set of stairs you build for your customers, making each job fit each customer's needs precisely. Having the proper stairs supplies and equipment, along with some experience, will ensure that you get the job done right every time, and to your customers' liking. Consider the following:
1. Buy the tools you'll need for making traditional wooden stairs. Specifically, you'll need good saws to use to make the cuts in the stringers and skirtboard.
2. Talk to your customers about what accessories they want for their custom stairs. These will have to be purchased specifically for each customer.
3. Look into what specific materials you'll need for installing wood and steel stair kits. Kits require fewer tools than the traditional route.
Find out which parts you'll need to build wooden stairs
As you know, the first thing to do in building a set of stairs is ensuring that you have all the basic parts. This includes your treads and risers (or appropriate wood, if you're cutting them yourself), handrails, balusters and newels as well as any connecting pieces you need for landings and turns in the staircase. And don't forget about your mounting brackets and hardware.
Try: Stair Supplies has a great pictorial as well as textual description of the basic stair parts and hardware. Stair Warehouse has a glossary that doubles as a list of necessary parts. It also provides information about wood species so you can help your customers choose which ones are best for their specific wants and needs.
Personalize your customers' stairs with accessories
You also need to work with the property owner to choose any accessories that will go into the finished staircase. These include finials, stair shoes, baluster spindles and other personal touches. At the very least, post caps should be used on all posts, as this camouflages any unfinished wood. Steel stairs are also easily adorned.
Try: Get some ideas from the products at Steel City Stair and Vintage Woodworks.
Obtain the right tools for installing an industrial steel stair kit
Some steel stair kits come with everything you need for the installation, but some don't, so make sure you have the proper equipment. A good drill, some bolt wrenches, a mallet and a level are pretty much all you need, whether you buy steel spiral staircase kits or prefabricated industrial stair kits.
Try: Although tools will vary with each kit, you can get some basic tool information from SalterSpiralStair.com. There are some good installation videos detailing the tools at Arke.
- Before getting started, you may want to develop your design with CAD software. Building stairs is a creative yet technical job, so utilizing CAD tools will improve your skills as a builder.
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