"Why didn't I think of that?" home repair

All your links are to the same photo.

I've had the drawer in the stair idea years ago since we don't have a mudroom or any place to put the shoes when we enter. Then I saw that pictures a year or so ago and kept it to model when I do the basement stairs.

Oops. Sorry.

What supports the tread?

Isn't the riser supposed to add support to the front of the tread where most of the weight lands?

Aren't we supposed to re-nail the tread to the riser or use a shim between the tread and riser if the tread gets loose?

Seems to me that a "floating tread" looks good in pictures but wouldn't last very long in real life.

In regards to the cup that holds the cookies.....do they make a left handed version? :-)

Hank

I have been unable to find any recipes for left handed cookies. Sorry.

You have to adapt a right handed cookie recipe. Look up "invert sugar".

I think if the work quality was good the floating tread would be supported by the drawer face when it was closed. You would need good wood. I could see it working. You are basically talking furniture grade work for the stairs but they are really furniture in this case.

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I'd be concerned that if the gap was so small as to prevent the tread from flexing, any swelling of the wood or settling of the house would cause the drawer to stick.

I guess if extremely stable wood was used, that wouldn't happen, but then as you implied, things could get pretty expensive - especially if you want every tread to match.

A steel plate or angle-iron?

also it looks like a fairly narrow staircase. Maybe only 30" or so. If the treads are good quality hardwood, they probably don't flex much. And the drawer front could serve as support as mentioned before even if there were a little gap there.

If the tread needs the riser to support it, it is too damn thin. The stringers (should be 3, but some builders cheap out on narrow stairs) should provide plenty of support.

Okay, now I bothered to look at the picture- obviously no center stringer. I would only trust a setup up like that with a thick hardwood tread, and maybe a metal reinforcement under the back edge. And yes, if the house settles, those drawers will stick. All in all, seems like a bunch of fussy expensive work when easier cheaper solutions are possible. The guy who designed that probably owned a sailboat- they put storage cubbies in every cubic inch they can, onboard those.

A tread is a beam. A joist is a beam. There's no automatic requirement that a beam needs more than two supports. If you stop to think about it, the price of such storage is high enough where bumping the treads up from 5/4 to something thicker isn't going to be the limiting factor.

"floating tread" stairs have been used, successfully, for many years inmany different applications. Just need to be properly engineered.

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