How the wall string meets the skirting board.
There are a few ways to end the wall stringer as it comes off the pitch, this is ideally determined before the stairs are built or the walls set out.
The reason is, the stair face of the wall stringer should align with the landing face of the skirting board, this is particularly important if you wish the moulding from the top of the stringer to flow straight into the landing.
The stairs will have to be set in place before the walls are plastered, to leave only the skirting thickness of the stringers left visible once the walls have been plastered.
Further consideration should also be allowed for any door frames or window reveals that are to be set into the same wall.
Below we have descriptions of various types of stringer termination or transition with a gallery at the bottom of the page.
Traditional wall string capping.
Many traditional stairs, do not have the same molding on the stringers as the skirting.
The most popular way to finish the top of the stringer is to plant on a length of staff bead. This may be scribed into the wall once plastered or fitted to close the gap between the stringer and the wall then plastered down on top of it.
Stringer flowing into skirting.
A very classic way of running the stringers straight over the landings into the skirting boards. This does require the plaster line to be set up correctly. The stairs are fitted before the plaster goes in; to allow for space around the stairs required whilst being fitted.
As mentioned in the introduction, any door frames or window reveals will have to be set to align with the back of the moulding that is set over the visible stringer face.
This is an ideal way to carry the molding detail when going through multiple flights.
How to calculate the curves.
These would traditionally be drawn free hand by using a piece of thin material such as 3mm 1/8″ ply and flexing the ply to get a nice curve between pitch and horizontal.
This same method will be used to create the flow to the bottom of the stringer to bring it down to ceiling height.
The stringer terminating into plinth blocks.
This is a traditional way to terminate the stringers, this is more common but not always used when plinth blocks are also used under the door architraves.
This is a good way to make a break when different moldings are used on the skirting and stringer detail.
The stringer terminating in a return mitre.
This is a very simple way to terminate the stringer. With the stringer generally having an equal to or greater than, projection from the wall than the thickness of the skirting.
This design is useful when the stringers finish at a different height than the skirtings.
Also useful when the stringer and skirting have different moldings.
The stringer mitred into the skirting.
The stringers may also be mitred at the change of pitch.
This is a very simple transition that does not require the creation of curves to the top of the stringers and allows straight sections of stock molding to be used.
The stringer with staff bead mitred over the ends.
This option will work when the stringers are set full of the skirting thickness.
A traditional staff bead detail is used to cap the stringer and scribe back into the plaster line, at the stringer ends the staff bead is mitred over and taken to floor level, the skirting then butts into the staff bead.
The stringer flowing round corner .
There may be times that the treads travel farther than the stringer, so that the stringer reaches a corner first, the stringer will then turn the corner and be reduced to skirting height around the corner.
The staircase continues into the landing area.
When this happens, the stringer will have to be buily up to get to the landing height before the end of the staircase.
Stringer transition gallery.
Here we have added some random pictures of different stringer terminations, these are in no particular order but are for inspiration. they are from jobs we have been involved in and from a range of property styles.
Fibrous plaster molding.
Many curved strings have fibrous plaster moldings set over them, this is used on many historic properties, the advantage of fibrous plaster is there are no joints in the molding and does not require curved moldings to be machined to match the skirting.
Fibrous plastering is also used when a stringer detail is to be set over cantilevered stone flights of stairs, in this situation, the entire stringer and moulding detail is molded from the fibrous plaster.
Some of these images do not show the transition into the skirting due to door frames being close to the top or bottom of the flights but you can see how they are bought to the correct level for when they do run straight into the stringers.
Random pictures showing stringer to skirting transitions.
