At last, I’m here to report that April and I finished building our wooden spiral staircase.  Over the course of five days, literally up to the day before we left Dancing Rabbit, we installed the risers and treads. The spiral staircase design came from our dearest Tom Cundiff, who instructed us on the layout over the phone and in person during our last Timber Frame Workshop. It took us a while to fully grasp the layout and the flow of things, but once we understood the principles, it went fairly smoothly. Well, the actual building was extremely physically taxing, but I digress.

And so this is our attempt at a DIY wooden spiral staircase. Here’s how we built it.

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First two steps installed… starting from the top, and working down

We have decided to take on our last and greatest task literally days before we leave Dancing Rabbit for Berea, Kentucky. In these final few days before we move, we are building a spiral staircase in our timber frame house. It is a rather foolish thing to do, but important, too.

We have literally 3 or so days left to try to finish the beast. And it is a beast, let me tell you. Drilling and chiseling 11 mortises in a roundwood post, making an equal number of stair risers with tenons, sawing/planing/gouging/oiling the 3″ elm slab steps… not to mention, having the wrap our puny minds around the layout has been quite the ordeal, to say the least. We are finally in the swing of things now that we have the layout firmly established, but the physical side of the work is still very intense.

Here are a few photos of what we are doing up until the literal minute we leave. Sometimes I wonder about these decisions we make…

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