Basement Stair Construction Musing.....
I've been looking at 4"X10" by 10' pine beams as a possibility for replacing carpet covered stair treads on my open basement steps. Pic attached of the open staircase and landing at the bottom of the open staircase. The carpet has been removed on 4 of the 8 stair treads and the landing before we gave up since there were a million staples in the carpet and underneath it's just 2X10 pressure treated lumber. Now it just looks really bad. The basement has been entirely gutted because of a water leak to the right of the stairs....So it is down to concrete walls and being rebuilt.
I like the rustic wood look, and while there is a ton of wood going on upstairs in my house, downstairs there will be very little wood (basement is currently gutted). This might tie the two spaces together. Before they had ugly brown shaggyish carpet on them. There is a landing that is 43" X 63" I need to do as well, and that would be the tricky part because I think I need to use 7 boards for it, and gluing them together could be a challenge.
The width of each step is 38' (top 8) and 43' (bottom 2 and landing 7). The widths mean you can't use standard 36" stair treads, which are only 1" thick and I really don't think were meant to be used on open staircases. You'd have to use 48" wide treads and cut each tread down, which isn't impossible or anything. But since I'd have to cut those down anyway, why not cut pine beams?
To buy 4" thick wood stair treads all finished is over $100 per tread. Ouch. To buy the wood beams and cut your own stairs is around $40 per 10' beam if I'm pricing things out correctly for white pine beams. I haven't priced shipping yet....That might make this whole idea moot.
Yes pine is soft, but this will be lightly used and there is pine everywhere else in the house. Plus I don't care if it gets scuffed up - rustic is good.
38"+38"+43" equals 119", which is just 1" shy of a 120" length of 10'. So I should be able to get 3 steps out of each beam, even if I had to cut 1/2" off each end (which I'm hoping I don't have to do). I'm pretty sure this staircase ended up designed the way it is simply because this was the easiest way for the guy building it to do it since it turned out with these dimensions. I figure I need 17 pieces so I need 5 10' beams and 1 12' beam. If one of the cuts goes wrong I have no spare.
That sounds risky. Maybe I should buy 2 extra beams and use them for a ceiling or something else in the basement if nothing goes wrong.
Also - For a railing, we're planning on changing to cable rails.