My husband, the perpetual optimist, thought he would have the staircase built in a weekend. Well…it took just over 100 hours (over several weekends). Two years prior, he had no idea what he was going to do with several massive Sycamore trees he was given. Sycamore is not a strong structural wood. It’s very water dense and non-porous. When he cut the logs, he decided to cut them in thick slabs so that he’d have more options for future ideas. One night as he was trying to figure out how and with what he was going to build the steps with, he thought of the slabs. What made the Sycamore slabs perfect for stair tread was that, because they are non-porous, they won’t soak up water quite so quickly like other woods. Additionally, they have beautiful grain patterns from the quarter sawn features. Each stair tread took about 2 hours to cut and put in place. He secured each tread from underneath and through an inset brace in the wall (except the first 4 at the bottom of the staircase).

FAVORITE FEATURES – The floating affect and live edge.

NOTABLE FEATURE – The windows were arranged differently until we realized that we wouldn’t be able to look out the window on the landing. Another (smaller) window was ordered, and the other windows were shifted up.