A stairway to...

Sam has been building stairs. These are some mighty thick pieces of wood he has to cut. His saw doesn't go all the way through, so he has to make each cut twice: once on each side.


Apparently when you build stairs, you have to first make a "map".


That picture was kind of hard to see, so here's a detail. It's complicated! It's a good thing Sam's a whiz at math.


One added bonus of doing all this work is that he has picked up quite a few toys tools along the way. The other day he got to use his new saw to cut some metal hangars down to size...



And the following day he hung some stringers in them!


Sam has been very meticulous about getting each step perfectly even and level. I think they're very sculptural.


When I got home at the end of the day, I could walk up the stairs to... well, to nowhere, yet!


I also got to admire the canned lights in cupola.

The next day Sam worked on a longer stringer... he's got plenty of eye protection, but I wasn't thrilled about the feet situation!



He still had 10 toes when he was done!


Maneuvering it into place...


Planing it...


I love the way the sawdust looks like snow... at least, I love it until it snows all the way down to the living room floor (and chairs, and table)! We have sawdust-drifts! I'm not complaining though...


Especially when I came home the next day and saw this! These will be the stairs up to the second floor.


Sam removed the temporary/faux-floor, so you can see all the way down now.


And then yesterday, when I got home, I first saw this: another delivery of lumber, to be used to build the laundry-room wall.


And then I noticed, at the back of the living room...


There was this: Sam had finished the stairs to the second floor! Sioux took to them immediately. They work for going up...


... and coming down!


While Sioux and I skipped up and down those stairs (neither of us is very helpful!), Sam was hard at work on the ones that will lead from the landing to the cupola...


So that is where things stand! I can't wait to see what surprises await me when I get home tonight!


All in all, I think things are coming along amazingly quickly. A year ago yesterday we were just beginning to pour the foundation, and today we're skipping up steps to the second floor! Wheeeee! Neat, neat, neat.

And tomorrow, the huge windows for the stairwell are getting delivered. That'll be pretty exciting, too. Stay tuned!