Landing Facia

To finish off the suspended landing, a facia board is needed to hide the edge of the joist and to give a stop-end for the plaster skim on the ceiling below. As with most of the components of this project, it is not straightforward, this time because of the steps in the middle of the landing to change levels between the old and the new.

I started with a length of timber, cut the angle for the step rise and dowelled, glued and clamped the two pieces together to make the increased height for the step :
Here is where this will fit over :

Note the protruding bolt heads where the double-joists are clamped together.

Dad brought over another great tool of his, the router. We used it first to put a half-moon moulding on the bottom edge :

This requires two runs down the workpiece, one on each side, as the cutting bit cuts a quadrant shape. There was no need to use a fence as the cutting bit has a guide wheel which bears on the timber.

This creates a lot of dust and chippings, so I was glad we had good weather and could undertake this outdoors. The eagle-eyed reader will have noticed that Dad is cutting a straight piece of timber, not the glued and dowelled step-piece I described earlier. This is for the other end of the facia which will feature again in a subsequent post.

I was confident I could make the half moon moulding along the long edge with a plane and sandpaper, but the main reason for employing the router was for the diagonal edge, where you are cutting end-grain. The high speed router made a superb job of this, where the plane, even after sharpening, would probably have chewed up the soft open grain.

Dad pointed out another way we could put the router to good use. In "plunge" mode, with a straight bit, I was able to cut out housings on the back face to clear the bolt heads :

After moving the supports for the temporary handrail on the landing (now clamped to the oak beam instead of screwed to the joist edges), the facia was glued and screwed in place :

The upper horizontal edge has been pre-drilled with some dowel holes that will allow the upper facia board to be attached securely to it.

Viewed from below, it gives a nice edge to the ceiling :


I would have preferred the long edge to protrude slightly lower than this, but as long as the plasterer is not too generous with his skim here, it should be fine.