Indoor Staircase Repair
Hi All,
Looking for references for people who focus on doing staircase repair in a brownstone. Thanks!
sanfordnson
in General Discussion 4 years and 6 months ago
34
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34 replies
sanfordnson | 4 years and 6 months ago
@doors definitely prefer 1-2 man team and original restoration if possible. Looks like it needs a fair amount of work as the treads and risers on them are pulling away from the stringer but hard to tell full scope as someone at some point put new risers and treads on top of the originals smh.
@jane thanks! I’ll search for urbandad’s post.
hasibur.rahman07 | 4 years and 6 months ago
Steve is right about time and costs of redoing anything. And skilled labor costs more and more.
JohnHancock | 4 years and 6 months ago
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 6 months ago
@jane: i recall you calling me once but cannot recall the conversation. in so far as things not being fixable; most things can be fixed its just that there is a cost/benefit consideration. someone called me a year ago and asked if i can fix her doors and i told her “i can fix anything. If you have the money, we can build a rocket ship and go to the moon”. she found that amusing but in a sense its true.
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 6 months ago
if op wished to describe what he needed i will think. even i occasionally work on the balustrade system if i am in a house working on doors and have the time and can do it correctly. what i cannot do and will not do and have never done is use anchors to pull a staircase back to the wall. i am generally busy enough though that i do not take this work because trying to make up missing parts and order them and the little pieces is a pain in the neck. probably a lot easier for someone who does it day in and out,
Guest User | 4 years and 6 months ago
Steve, 100% agree with you. Sometimes worth a try as a few might take but in general you are right. That being said it is also challenging to find a handyman willing to repair stairs. A lot of them balk at the prospect. And sometimes what you have could be so poorly done that that it’s not salvageable. You might recall my door issue and I had the same issue with my cellar stairs – they weren’t really fixable.
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 6 months ago
@jh: no doubt those 100k jobs exist. they exist here as well but they are in the unions and a union electrician gets 92 and change an hour (which includes benefits and vacation; factor in the cost of workers comp and the firms pay into social security and it is well over 100 an hour). but the climate is not good for these jobs. be it the mayor who is in bed with the developers and wants cheap labor for them or even on the national stage, the direction fully seems to be to bringing in cheap labor to pull down wages to the benefit of the top and detriment of the working class. the political environment has not been favorable to unions in since Reagan broke Patco and it has been downhill since and i do not see it getting better any time soon.
i know you are from another country. i spoke to a couple from sweden a few weeks back (he from there, she from here and had lived there for 10 yrs). she pointed out how in sweden when you called a carpenter, you get a carpenter. when you call a plumber, you get a plumber. here, you don’t know what you are getting. right away she alluded to the high school shop classes in sweden. i told her “we are not that far from it here; in the 1970’s i took plastics, wood, electric, automotive. but there is no point in taking those classes when you have to compete against people willing to work for 25 an hour off the books”. so then she bought this up; 80% of the workforce is unionized in sweden. the direction in this country is completely against that and even if we started trade programs no one is going to want to hear about unions because they will drive up prices and force a lot of people who are not capable of learning and following simple directions out of work. a lot of people would be out of work. ( a lot of people do not want to learn, they are resistant).
i do believe these jobs exist but i believe they are fleeting and the leadership is too bent on cheap labor and will not want to hear about solid jobs to support workers and families – and those jobs will cost an employer $120 an hour here in NYC and $75 an hour in the mid west. it comes down to money. people complain about what they are getting and a shortage of qualified workers and i get calls from customers who want me to fix something someone screwed up and i always ask how this happen and the problem always comes down to one thing: money.
do me a favor, get me the title of that program or better still post a link to it here. i want to watch it and try to see what the truth is – if it is very localized or if there is something else, such as these jobs making 100k but you have to invest a fortune in insurance and a new van and set yourself up for something that might disappear in two years. the system is not invested in working people making money like this and i have to tell you, the laws are stacked against us. it is not a favorable climate for small businesses and certainly not for workers and i want to see if they address any of that or get the view from our youth.
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 6 months ago
there are two stair companies over here where i live, i just don’t put them forth as i think many of them are looking to remove a lot and replace a lot when i would bet the OP wants a small, one man or two man operation to work with what he has.
Guest User | 4 years and 6 months ago
Urbanddad posted a good list of stair companies. I found it really helpful as sone of the options weren’t showing up on Google maps. Search the forum.
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 6 months ago
Npr had a similiar story on the radio about this about 3 weeks ago. A month ago. It was for very high tech jobs though in small high tech plants. The story i heard was not about residential electricians.
These journalists talk about this but do they ever try to find the other view? Do they find youth and talk to them and put a mic in their face and tell them there are great jobs and ask them if they are interested? They have no problem going around asking people why they are afraid to walk down the street at night. There must be something else out there stopping people. I dont think it is strictly working with their hands. You know what could have something to do with this, people want to make 100k right away and they dont want to spend 5 years making less. To youth, every low wage job looks like a dead end job.
You pointed out that that was the midwest. Electricians here get twenty five an hour off the books. I know someone who began at 20 and six months later was at 25. (This person has a green card) Three years later (3 ms ago) he calls me askin g for sidework. I figure he has to be making 35 an hour now and ask why he wants side work and what will he want me to pay him and he told me the same as his job, 25 an hour. There is something wrong here. If he threatens to quit, 5 other guys are waiting to take his job.
This is what happens with electricians in projects for the dept of education. 10 years ago a guy told me that as an electrician on a prevailing wage job, he was paid 25 an hour but had to sign a log saying he got the prevailing wage, probably 45. I knew and know this is wrong but i kept my mouth shut as i did not want to bring him harm.
There are too many people who feel they need the jobs and too many people who dont realize they are entitled to kick and complain and too many people afraid to complain or buck the system and that squeezes everyone else out.
The shoddy workers are now moving out to long island and they will be squeezing the better skilled people out out there.
JohnHancock | 4 years and 6 months ago
PBS Newshour had a report on this just recently. The owners of the plumbing and electrical trades etc can’t find people to work for them. They pay very high salaries very quickly but there’s a stigma attached to a field where you have to work with your hands. This was not in the City though, I think it was the Midwest, and that makes all the difference. You could jump in your truck to the jobsite and make 6 figures within years of being hired
sanfordnson | 4 years and 6 months ago
Thank you for checking with him for me. Appreciate that! Completely hear you on this. It is a sad situation and I haven’t seen any journalists mentioning it. My dad is a tradesman and he talks about this also.
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 6 months ago
ok, i called the person i mention above, tom staggs, and he told me that he is “pushing 60 and when he is done with his own renovation, he doubts he will go back to this kind of work. carrying stuff in and out is getting very hard”.
the situation that this talented person finds himself in is bad for him and everyone of you out there. he can no longer carry the tools? i read into that a bit but did not say this to him: “then you need to hire a helper”. here is the problem with that: when you hire a helper and you own a home and plan to retire and not screw up your child’s college education, you really have to carry worker’s comp on that helper and follow the letter of the law. not only is worker’s comp the law, it is also 17% of payroll. the issue is, when contractors try to price small jobs in a way that allows them all the protections of the law, they do not get the jobs because there are so many law breakers running around with a “its someone else’s problem” attitude that when someone trying to do the right thing comes along, they lose the jobs to t he law breakers. and the law breakers are all wround us. People don’t want to hear about contractors trying to “do the right thing”; at least when it costs money.
when tom and a few others leave this line of work, the quality is going to nose dive. it has begun already, but we will see it in a decade or so, really bad. i was saying this to a customer the other day and this was his reply (and this is no lie, he is on here and might see this; he found me on here two weeks back): “there is a trade school in the NYS University system, someplace upstate”. everybody thinks that training trades people is the problem; even the most educated and intelligent people believe this, i hear journalists talk about this without addressing the root of the problem; the wages and benefits and a political system that works to divide the working class is the issue, not the need for trade schools. i asked the customer: do you think i want to send my son to that school so he can come back here to this city and compete against people making $25 an hour with no retirement, no disability, no payments into the system and the constant threat of legal action if you do work that way? it is no way to live.
Someone has to say it. I hear journalists touch on the fringe of this all the time, but they will not look into the cause. for all their education and reading, they do not have the insight.
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 6 months ago
hey, so this guy does a lot of this: Tom Staggs. Handicraft LLc. he is pretty much a small operation like myself which means he is quality driven but does not take on a lot of work. i have to be fair and let you know that a year or so ago he told me he was taking off from work to do a full gut on his own house and i left him a message a week ago asking if he was ok with me plugging his name here or not and i never heard back. his number is 646-247-3593. i will call him now and ask if he is taking on projects and if he says no, i will report back to this post.
he is pretty much a woodworker and trades or craftsperson in the old sense of the word.