Stairway to Madness

After three days of head-scratching madness, I finally completed the staircases.  Thank goodness for Jenn at Jenn's Mini Worlds or I would have committed myself.  Her pictures of the progress of her staircase build were invaluable.  She's done a whole series of staircase documentation, so if you're having problems with your Beacon Hill staircase build visit her blog.

Building the second floor staircase was pretty straightforward, but again holding everything together until I could get the next piece on was nearly traumatic.  I did go out and buy some gel crazy glue as per Giac's suggestion, but of course it was after the fact.  Oh well, I'll have it for future use.

I also found some white glue that dries clear and holds much quicker than the wood glue I was using.  And it's a bit thicker so it doesn't run quite so much.

This is what I started with for the second staircase.  Some of this pile is trim for all the staircases.

This staircase went together fairly easily and the best part?  The treads actually overlap the risers by the suggested 1/8 inch!

Next I put together all the stair rails - two of these rest on the second floor and the other on the third floor.  I just love these little rails.  They're so darn cute.  That is until I went to install them.  They were too long!  WTF?!!  Anyway, after some finagling and cutting off about an 1/8 inch off the back posts, I managed to get them installed.  Brian said that for all the time it's taking me to build this house I could be building a real one . . . is that a compliment?

This is showing how to install those corner posts.  After fiddling with it for some time, I jumped on the internet and found Jenn's blog.  Those corner posts go on either side of the long end of the rail.  This is where Greenleaf should have added a few extra pictures in their instructions.  So anyway, now you know.

So after many hours of sanding, dryfitting, gluing, staining and installing, this is how the staircases turned out.  I'm pretty pleased with them (and myself - ha!).  The above picture is the first floor staircase in all it's glory.  The doors lead to the dining room.

Second floor staircase and rails.  That door leads to the bathroom.

And the third floor railing.

With the staircases finally completed, I was able to move on to installing the tower front.  This was not without its share of frustration (on my part).  I dryfitted it and realized that I should have cut out for the front door.  So I took it off and cut out the door opening.  Then I glued and installed it.  Satisfied, I turned it around to look inside and realized that I should have installed the wallpaper!  It would be really hard to install wallpaper around those staircases, so I pulled off the tower front and began wallpapering.  One should not wallpaper at 10 o'clock at night.  I cut one of the pieces wrong.  Ugh!!  Anyway, I got the first floor wallpaper installed and cut a template for the second floor as I ran out of wallpaper.  I have more on order but it will be a few days before it gets here.

So with the door cut out and the first floor wallpaper installed, I finally reglued and reinstalled the tower front, taping the corners to hold it together.  And I just realized I should have taken a picture of the front of the staircase before installing the tower front.  Darn!

After a long day I wound down by dryfitting the interior walls.  I decided that I will need to wallpaper the back and closet wall in the bedroom before I permanently install the walls as it will be difficult to wallpaper the closet once it's all together.  After rehabbing my first Beacon Hill, this I know for sure!

 . . . and then I went to bed.