Cut once. I need to make a variation on this aphorism. “Measure everything, order once.”
I had completed my mini-stairway, the training set of four steps at the upper section of This Odd Staircase. I had learned how to cut the treads and risers to fit the odd angles, to shape them to my custom design and to install them. I had great satisfaction that the concept would work, and I had a recipe for making the remaining dozen steps.
The upper stair section had treads and risers that were 35 inches wide, give or take half an inch. I had measured them carefully. I measured them more than twice. I had counted the all the steps. More than twice. I added an extra tread and riser, and making a last reconfirming check on the width, ordered the 36-inch stock material from Baird Brothers.
So you can imagine the sinking sensation when setting about to make the first of twelve steps on the main stair section, at finding that they were 39 inches wide, not 35!
And this is why the shipping weight was less than it should have been. If I had been thorough in my measurements, I would have ordered the right materials, coming to 425 pounds of wood, not 380.
I soon started pondering how to salvage this expensive error. Maybe I could add some decorative side elements to hide the fact that the treads were inadequate. A stair skirt of some sort. But realizing this would only complicate a project already over my head, and with some calming encouragement from Portia, I knew what needed to be done. Order the right stuff.
I will figure out how to return the wrong stuff (shipping expense makes this a problem), or find a local market for it, or some other use for it (I proposed making a high class stairway to the basement, but this was rejected).
It was a setback, expensive but not fatal. As Fred Brooks warned me: plan to throw away your first effort, you will know what to do on the second.