Stairway to Anxiety

I am not sure what it is about staircases.  There is an invisible, but substantial, negative energy around the task of constructing stairs.  To be clear, it IS a technical endeavor.  Calculating the appropriate rise and run and accommodating the thickness of beams, treads, and brackets all contribute to the voodoo.  And once you embark on finding a contractor to whip up some stairs you start to recognize the look their eyes.  The ghosts of past stair projects haunting them.  Particularly when you are talking about steel.  Wood isn't as demanding a medium (no offense carpenters).  If you make a mistake you can rather easily re-cut or repair without devastating cost, but if you botch a solid welded stringer, or make a mistake on tread spacing a redo can get expensive.

Of course, after considerable investigation we decided we wanted a steel staircase in our home with big, chunky PSL treads (you can read about earlier stair discussions HERE).  Roberta contacted a dozen welders in the Austin area to bid the project.  Some were interested but were scared off early on and never followed through with quotes.  Others priced themselves out of the job (perhaps intentionally to avoid the challenge).  A couple were so unsure of the design that I fully expected to get a Dr. Suess style stairway to Cukooville if we handed over our money and faith.  We did find one shop that had everything we wanted - tons of experience with stairs, dozens of references and great prices - but when the time came to get to work they were inundated in work and were booked 8 weeks out.  Go figure.

3.5" thick PSL prototype tread in the garage.

In the end we located a great shop in Lakeway and they jumped right in to the project.  The shop owner is Kevin and he did a great job measuring and sketching out the design.  He also will be providing us with support struts for the door overhangs (future post).  We pretty much gave him artistic liberty with the handrail design and we chose to use stainless steel cabling for all of the horizontal railing elements.

After a week he announced everything was ready to install.  Roberta dropped by to check everything out and grabbed a few photos of the hardware.  Since there will be a lot of contractors going up and down the stairs in the coming weeks we decided we will install 2'x12" treads as a temporary solution so the PSL beams don't get roughed up.  However, we delayed the installation until the floors were complete so you will have to wait a few days to see the result.

Here is the landing - it's 58" x 40".

This is the handrail that will mount upstairs along the hallway before doubling back to come down the stringer.

Close-up of the handrail detail.  Stainless steel cables with run through the holes.

More railing after powder coat.

The stringers.  These are quite long as the floor to floor depth of the staircase in 12.5 feet.