I'm a construction supervisor for a large framing contractor in New Mexico. Our ten crews frame about 15 custom homes each month, most of them high end, with 3,000 or more square feet of floor space. In this niche, radius stairs — curved stairs that arc as much as 180 degrees around a single point — are quite common. I've framed 40 or 50 of them in the last nine years and have developed a method that's both fast and accurate. In fact, the stair I'm about to describe took only 16 hours to frame. Code Requirements As with any stairway, the first order of business was to verify that the stair would meet code. A crucial dimension with curved stairs
