Roofing Special: Speed Roofing
A lot of people think that building a roof with stairs is extraordinarily time consuming, and it is if you do it in a time-consuming way. I imagine many of these people know where they want their roof, and then add the stairs by shift-hanging off the edge and placing it carefully against the previous stair block so that it faces the right way. Doing it this way, without practice, can take a long time.
There is another way, and it may not immediately occur to you. So it helps to understand a little bit about roofing: Shingles don't float in mid-air! You have to attach them to something, and we call this the deck. It's the surface you attach to the building's frame to which you apply the roofing.
If we put a deck on top of our building, one block under where we want the roof, we have a convenient surface to place stairs against, and it's much easier to get them facing the right way.
You might be thinking, "I'll just make the gables* and then add the stairs side by side, like this:"
Fig. 2. Placing stairs against other stairs
Later you might think "this sucks because it takes so much time," and you'd be right. It does take a lot of time.
Fig. 3. Make a deck first
You can build much faster if you lay the deck first and then run along it placing the blocks.
Fig. 4. Placing stairs against the deck
Placing blocks this way gives you a larger target to click to get the stairs facing the right way, so it takes less time to aim.
Fig. 5. The deck from inside
The deck takes up space indoors, but does have its advantages. You can't attach things to the back of the stair roofing, for instance, like torches or paintings.
Fig. 6. Optional: remove the deck
Or, you can knock out the deck underneath the roof if you want more room.
If you find stair roofing to be a tedious, time-consuming process, give this a try. Not only is it easier and faster to place the stairs, it also helps plan out the roof, and can alert you to size or space problems early; if you make a mistake, removing stairs with regular tools is a pain, but removing regular blocks is much faster. I usually find that laying the deck, putting stairs over it, and then removing the deck afterwards still saves me time.
* Gables are the triangular parts of the building that fit into the sloped roof