Last September I began working on a 14-by-28-foot wing at a house in Orleans, Mass. The plan was to expand a small and awkward loft area into a full second floor and replace the existing, L-shaped stair with a double winder.

I don't build stairs as a specialty; over the course of 30 years, I've done maybe a couple of dozen. And until this project, I'd only built the kind of winders that come to a common point and aren't legal anymore. These days, a code-compliant winder can't measure less than 6 inches at its narrowest point. Depending on the available space,...

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