Custom Stairs - Materials and Construction

The stair design has come together and we're pretty happy about the direction we're headed. However, I would not say the design is "finalized" since we still don't have a good sense about the cost. We are confident that the cost is less than the other designs and we already know it will be above our budget (the budget was a joke - another epic fail by our builder), but how much over budget?

First stop was Atlanta Specialty Woods. We met with Christian Spencer the owner of ASW to see what he had available. He had quite a lot and I was very impressed with broad range of reclaimed timber sizes and cuts. Almost all the beams were silvered wood due to being subjected to the elements for decades. Some of the beams had very large saw marks from being cut right with a large sawmill circular saw. There were beams from mortise and tenon constructed barns and even a few that were hand hewn rather cut with a saw.

We needed timber beams in the range of 6"x7" or larger with a length of at least eight feet. I really liked a couple of beams that were hand hewn and taken from a barn up north that used mortise and tenon construction. The beams had mortises every few feet and they were on the short side of the dimensions so we could expose these on the underside of the stairs. The price for these? $725! You might think that's high, but I thought it was a great price. These would be our stringers and we get to put a piece of American history in our house in a very original way.

The hand hewn beam we liked...over 100 years old!

A portion of the selection at Atlanta Specialty Woods

Now to the treads. Constructing a 3" tread seemed like it was going to cost prohibitive. I was thinking they would have to find 3" thick oak slabs large enough to get the required tread depth of 11.5". The tread company had something different in mind; they were going to take oak 2x4s, sandwich them together, and then picture frame them with thinner oak pieces. Cost? $175 per tread and we needed 18 of them.

Meanwhile, Paul had sent the metal bracket specs to a local steel fabrication shop for a quote. The steel angle irons were going to cost $1700. Wow! I was pretty floored at this point. This was starting to add up. We had about $300 worth of bolts to buy and we still hadn't discussed labor costs.

Our trim guy, Brad, was going to construct the stairs with a colleague of his. We met at the house to go over the construction and they both said "no way." After an hour of discussion, they didn't want to do it. Primarily, because it had never been done and they weren't confident that they could get the treads level and keep them that way. Paul stepped in to help persuade them during another meeting and much to my surprise it worked! They agreed. The estimated cost was going to be $3200. They wanted an hourly rate since they weren't confident they could accurately gauge how long this was going to take. Fair enough.

So our costs at this point (without railing) was about $9500. I needed a martini...or three. I wasn't too thrilled with this, but I was also trying to avoid typical stairs. They just wouldn't fit in with the rest of the house and the stairs are the main focal point once you get past the foyer. Typical closed riser stairs were going to run about half the cost, but that didn't include the additional drywall or the railing. We decided to bite the bullet and go with the most original stairs I've ever seen in a modern home.

The brackets after rust removal and oil application

Beams before first cut

Bolts...a lot of bolts

Things went fairly quickly once we got all the materials. I had Christian pressure wash and steel brush the beams to bring back some of the brown tone of the wood. The steel brackets had a lot of rust on them when they arrived. Not knowing what to do about that, Paul recommended gun oil to prevent rust. Beth and I spent a couple of evening at the house with a drill, steel brush wheel, and spray gun oil. We took all the rust off the steel, and gave each one two coats of gun oil - rubbed in after being sprayed on. It took some time and those brackets were heavy (about 30 lbs each). It was worth the effort though. The brackets went from a rust "what the hell are those for" look to something worthy of being a stair component.

Underside of stringer...the mortise is a nice touch exposing the bolt.

Finished stairs...sans railing

Assembly of the stairs only took two days. Some of the treads are quite level, but you really have to look for that to notice. Under foot, they feel just like any other set of stairs.

The final product is incredible. We absolutely love these stairs. They are not silent stairs due to wooden treads sitting on metal brackets that are sandwiching a unevenly hewn timber stringer. But we expected that and they are definitely worth it. Here's how they turned out:

The chicken wire on the railing has since been removed. The railing without the chicken wire would not have passed inspection due to the large spacing between railing in-fill components.