Replies

1. 
   dustinf | Jun 16, 2006 04:49am | #1

   Cool.

2. 
   Stray | Jun 16, 2006 04:31pm | #2

   Love those steps!

   Ithaca, NY  "10 square miles, surrounded by reality"

3. 
   ravz | Jun 16, 2006 10:27pm | #3

   very slick!  can you post some constuction detials about both the feature wall and the 'magic' stairs :)  is there any bounce in them?

    

   Rav

1. 
   quicksilver | Jun 17, 2006 02:52am | #5

   Here's a couple of shots of the cantilevered stair pre-skin. http://homepage.mac.com/quicksilver6/PhotoAlbum13.htmlWe had the brackets welded up out of 1/2'' plate. The double studs are wrapped in 16 ga 3-5/8'' steel track. We leveled the bottom plate and bolted the bracket on measuring off of a story pole. The next thing we are going to do is have 1/2" plate connect the brackets together the make up each tread frame. This will help combine the strength of the two brackets and serve as attachment points for the handrail. The rail is attached at 4 points.The wall was skinned with 3/4'' T&G ply. We took any twist out of the studs by turning the bracket until it was perfectly square off of the wall and fastened the stud to the 3/4'' ply with screws.As far as flex in the stair, as you can see from the photos we had two goes at it. We built it to engineers spec's and there was just too much flex. We brainstormed and came up with the metal stud track idea. It improved the stiffness exponentially. Still now there is a little give. I think its inherent in the steel. But it is plenty solid feeling. I think when we tie it all together it will be great.
   When I first saw this I realized it could be a potential disaster, so I really tried to keep that in mind when I was devising an approach. Can you imagine walking into that house and looking at something potentially really cool but it was crooked here or had too much flex or the treads . . . you get the picture. I think it came out nice. My carpenter Paul and helper Ben did a great job. We layed out the holes for the brackets in the mdf feature wall by creating a pattern 3/8'' larger than the bracket that encompassed one tread (two holes). We slid the pattern over the two brackets pinned it to the 3/4'' ply and used a tic stick to lay them out. The horizontal dadoes are actually rabbets and we shot the verticle line with a laser and then took the panels back down and routed the verticle dado with a Festool router and 9' rail. We used this technique until we got above the stairs where we just ran the panel long and centered the verticle dado and cut the edges with a flush cutting bit. The plan came together nicely.Faux finishers will come in later and coat the wall with a texture material (something like joint compound with ground pecan shells mixed in - at least that's what she said) and then glaze over to resemble concrete in the finish. The treads are going to be maple but the floor is bamboo.

   Edited 6/17/2006 11:24 am ET by quicksilver

   Edited 6/17/2006 8:56 pm ET by quicksilver

1. 
   ravz | Jun 20, 2006 06:37am | #6

   Wow, thanks for the detailed overview.. looks fantastic.  I bet the clients will never really appreciate the amount of work involved to make it look that good.  Hope you charged em accordingly :) 

    

    

4. 
   MSA1 | Jun 17, 2006 12:21am | #4

   Those floating steps are sweet. Nice clean site and good work.