[romoranger]

Hey, first I would like to say that the question I have will have an answer that I should know. Unfortunately here in Arizona there aren't too many stair cases to run across, and when I do run across them there is typically no skirt board at all.

For a job I am doing right now I am going to need to mill the skirt board to match the existing profile baseboard they have running in their house. That's the easy part. The part that I can't figure out is determining how tall I need to make the skirt board before I scribe it to the stairs. Throughout the house there is a 6" baseboard. My thinking was that I want the baseboard to have the same height at the edge of the stair as it does throughout the house. After doing some math I determined that I will need to make a 12" tall skirt board (before scribing). The stairs have a run of 12.5" and rise of 7". This morning I was questioning my method. Right where the stairs end there is only about 12" before there is a door way that is framed by casing. My biggest worry is that this skirt board will a) hit the door frame and be taller than 6", therefore making the baseboard on the other side of the door frame look terrible, and b) it will be way too big.

As I stated before, for you carpenters that work everywhere else in the country this will be extremely easy and I will look clueless, but I prefer that to installing something terrible looking. thanks!

[basswood]

The part of the skirt extending above the stair nosing does not need to match base height. I think it looks fine if the average exposure is the same... say 3" above nosings and 9" exposed between back of tread (bottom of riser) and skirt top. This results in an average of 6" of skirt showing.

Even with those parameters, sometimes the landing wall is too short for a simple miter from skirt to base and a creative transition is needed.

In the stairs shown, that is a 10" skirt. A taller skirt would have run into the built-in down lighting for the stairs.

Here are some pics:

[romoranger]

thanks! Looking at that skirt I think I may have to stick with my 12" number, the profile on this baseboard is actually slight bigger than that (its a really tall decorative profile that's about 2", if not more in height). I question how having 1" underneath the profile would look, guess its time to experiment and see what looks good. thank you once again.