With Quark installed, presing K (by default) enables orientation lock mode. Any directional blocks like stairs are placed in one direction until the mode is disabled, instead of using the player's current direction.

It would be nice of construction wands respected this setting when it was enabled.

ConstructionWands have a similar mode. You can open the wand GUI and change the direction from Player to Target.
This places blocks in the same orientation as the block you are targeting. See the pictures in the readme for explaination.

So you can build a roof with stair blocks by placing the first layer with Quark's direction lock and then extending that with the wand.

There is no way I could integrate the direction lock from Quark though. Quark has no API for that, so no other mod can tell if the lock is enabled.