Kieth/Lindsay stairs

Keith and Lindsay, neighbors in Bellingham, have a beautiful garden and an old 1932 craftsman style house with wonderful detailing. Like many houses of this vintage with a full basement, the main level is about 4 feet off the ground and accessed by a large, steep, massive concrete stairway with a flimsy railing.
They approached me about helping design some stairs. An effort to simplify and refine a design it became more complicated than they could do on their own--so we began the discussion of my assistance design, material acquisition and installation.


This cedar, from Two Dog Timberworks, was reclaimed from downed or salvaged logs and is as nice as any cedar I've seen in the last few years. It's the same material as I used on Cheryl's fence.


The stairs are open beam stairs and made up of a total of 7 pieces of wood and 6 bolts. Considerably more tools were used in their completion. First the wood had to be cut, then planed and jointed.


Of coarse, when we got into the porch, we realized it was sagging and now was the time to fix it, re-support it and refine the details of the existing deck that, left unfixed, would have been a weak link between the old porch and the new stairs.


We borrowed a jack from neighbors and proceeded to jack up the porch while all the time being careful of the mature plants surrounding the project.


After 2 days of milling, transporting, unloading, laying out and cutting wood, here the wood looks just like it did, save for the rose wood finish, as it did at my shop above.

And on the third day, with all the pieces of wood prepped, the porch fixed and sanded and the design resolved, we assembled the stairs--in about 30 minutes!


Keith keeps me company while I'm under the stairs making a few attachments! The original concrete stairs were solid and so massive we decided to leave them.

The plan--plant with moss and ferns, transforming the concrete into a boulder! Keith helped this transition by taking off all the corners with a jack hammer last week.


Detail of stair base allows the stair beams to float. Because they used to have a sidewalk, the grade of the path is low and will be brought up to be level with the surrounding grass. The path way will be large stones set in lawn, similar to Lois's. The grass will actually be about 2 inches below the base of the stair beams allowing for easy trimming and preserving the 'floating' look.

All done and said, the family puts the first foot/dog prints on the stairs!