Well sonny, unless someone’s given you a pretty good reason to, why not? Prefabricated stairs are the cheapest option available to anyone who is looking to buy a set of stairs. Sure you can have some carpenters come over and build what you want right in your home and in front of your eyes, but it is going to be an expensive affair and there are going to be more than 10 – 15 people running around your house and who’ll need at least your driveway to work their way through the projects that they have been assigned.
As a manufacturer of prefabricated stairs and as someone who has worked as foreman on a number of projects let me tell you, when I say it is going to take X weeks of your time, it is. And this is a number calculated with a reliable crew in mind, throw in a crew who don’t work as well or don’t work well together and you’ve got a royal mess on your yard.
And don’t even get me started on the amount of wood and other materials that you’ll end up wasting as a result of all of this. Trust me, that is what hurts the most. Losing time, money and trust on the same day aren’t exactly the ingredients that go into making a happy day.
Add to that the fact that wood will swell up in the rainy season and in the winter which makes getting the measurements of the stringers and the treads a nightmare. A review done by Reader’s Digest in 2004 was all about asking project managers and carpenters what the most difficult project was that they’d find on a home improvement or a renovation site. The answer? Building a roof. The second most difficult thing? Building and install a set of stairs!
