Your complete guide to designing safe, comfortable and cost effective stairs.

Hi, my name is Bill Bradley. When I was a nineteen years old apprentice carpenter and joiner I built my first half a dozen flights of stairs.
After a lifetime of working in the construction industry I designed and built my last four staircases (along with the apartments that contained them) at the age of sixty four.

• In this 149 page book I will be guiding you through the design of safe comfortable stairs using practical, hands-on knowledge.
• If you are dissatisfied with the books that cover stair design with a few brief paragraphs, then you will be happy to find out that I have a different style. I don't gloss over the tricky bits or leave you in the dark about any of the processes. The instructions are clear with excellent graphics on most pages.
• You may be thinking that I am an old guy who is going to be talking about the old methods. Not so, To survive over 35 years running my own company as a master builder (general contractor), competing for every job on price and quality I had to move with the times and take full advantage of modern materials and methods.
• I have been CAD drafting and submitting my own construction plans for building approvals since the mid 1980's so I well and truly know the pitfalls of falling foul of the building regulations. In this book I will guide you through this complex subject.
• Many of the methods that I describe in the book are not well documented elsewhere. There is a critical chapter on the relationship between the landings and the handrails that in all my years of stair building and research on stairs I have never seen explained before.
• For anyone interested in building "Continuous Handrails" that one chapter alone makes the purchase of this book money well spent.

The very first and most important step in building safe and comfortable stairs is to learn about the variations and options open to modern stair designers.