Icehouse Stairway Update

Spoiler Alert: the icehouse stairway is not 100% complete. Yet. But it will be. Soon. I hope! There’s still an itty-bitty electrical wrapup (finishing up the riser lighting installation), but the main hurdle — one that’s been delayed again and again since winter — is the banister. Handrails and balusters. Everything’s been fabricated for a while, a looong while, but installation is stuck in limbo. Handrail purgatory! Nevertheless, we’re overdue for an icehouse stairway update, so this afternoon I’ll showcase the pretty progress (and sidestep the vexingly tardy railings.)

Treads + Risers

First, let’s rewind the timeline by four months. The first two photos in this post remember the early phases: 1) icehouse stairway framing complete and 2) treads and risers milled and ready for installation.

If you’re a wood aficionado you may recognize the species we’re using for these treads and risers: poplar. (Yes, a miscellaneous piece of something else — cedar? — appears to have been leaned in front of one stack, but the rest betray their origins with their telltale greenish hue.) Harvested about twenty paces south of the carriage barn, a row of mature poplars had begun succumbing to nature’s forces (optimal growing conditions, strong wind, and gravity). Due to their risky proximity to the historic carriage barn, we elected to fell the trees down after a couple of crowns were snapped off during a windstorm. They had come crashing down short of the carriage barn, but it was evident that we were going to lose more trees overtime, and we might not get so lucky.

Milled on site and cured in the carriage barn for the last dozen years or so, this lumber is highly suitable for finish grade carpentry. In fact, we’ve used it throughout the interior of the house.

The poplar blanks above have been dimensioned and planed, and they’re ready for installation as stair treads and stair risers.

Stairway Field Notes

Let’s turn to my field notes from late winter, when I evolved the stairway plan from clear sealed ash and elm treads with paint grade risers (originally conceived as a tie-in with first floor) to painted poplar throughout.

We discussed my decision to install paint-grade risers and treads, paint grade landing, and basically paint grade everything related to the staircase EXCEPT for the top tread/landing which I would like to mill out of beech to integrate seamlessly with loft flooring. (Peter mentioned possibly already having a suitable blank?)

Several factors contributed to the change of plans:

1. Painted treads, risers, stringers, etc. would echo an 200 year old design decision from Rosslyn’s main staircase.
2. Transitioning from sealed hardwood on the main floor (as and elm) to sealed hardwood in the loft (beech) with a painted stairwell would simplify the program while offering a bridge between the dissimilar speeches.
3. Accumulating delays in our finish schedule were beginning to concern me, so shifting from hardwood to paint grade was a way to accelerate the fabrication, installation, and finishing workflow.

The change was timely, and progress improved. Especial thanks to Justin Buck who contributed amply to this stage of the project.

Some additional field notes from the same period:

Review the main stairs in the house to devise a suitable tread template (same nosing with similar Scotia molding underneath). I would like us to dimension and plane our own poplar lumber for treads, landing, etc. to maintain historic consistency.

As noted in Tiho’s drawings, the stringers will be visually integrated into the trim plan for the stairway, including skirtboards. This will streamline design, but it necessitates some field decisions with respect to the T&G nickel gap and trim integration.

Peter duplicated the stair treads to match those in the house, and we came up with a clean and simple marriage of paneling with skirt board that you can discern in the roughly 2-month old progress photo above.

Icehouse Stairway-ish

The previous two photos show progress from May to the present. Needless to say, we’re not as far as long as I had anticipated by this point, but we are inching our way towards the finish line.

This next photo below, slightly lower than the previous (and looking east instead of south), offers an interesting vantage of the mid-staircase landing. This is one of those ephemeral views that will be transformed permanently soon when the balusters and railings are installed.

And I’ll wrap up this standing on the first floor, looking north at the first stairs up to the mid story landing. to be sure, I’m counting down the moments until the balusters and railings are installed. And yet this perspective is already plenty poetic!

With luck my next stairs-related update will showcase the completed stairwell with painted balusters and a handsome handrail that rhymes with the ash and elm flooring. Wish. Me. Luck!