So after the drywall was installed and the painting was mostly finished, the deal with the stair guy from Colorado went through... of course it did... I serve a God who cares about the little things.
Here's the story, so I have always known the type of stairs that I wanted for this house from the first day I purchased it... spiral. And having looked at hundreds of log cabins over the years, I knew the type of spiral staircase that I wanted... logs. Duh! :) So after many, many, many phone calls to companies all over the US, I realized that this would be a very expensive set of stairs and way out of my budget. But one of the last phone calls I made to
StairMeister Stairs gave me some hope. After talking to Bill Schwartz, one of the owners, and his announcement that these stairs start at $12K, I informed him that this was way out of my budget. However his response was, "well, I might have something that will work out in the shop." ...music to my ears! He proceeded to tell me that he had a set of stairs that he'd had for a while and that he would not sell them because they did not meet his standard of quality. He said he would sell them to me at less than his cost if I was interested. Of course I was and he said that he would send me a picture to see if I was ok with the "flaws." Upon seeing the picture and not even being able to see a flaw, I called him back and said yes, I was interested. So the next BIG problem... would it fit??? You see, this set of stairs was custom made for an entirely different house with different dimensions. The floor to floor height, the turn of the spiral (direction), the number of treads, and the size of the spindles, all had to work in my opening, something that could not be changed.
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These three pics are what Bill sent to me to show me the "flaws." |
And wouldn't you know it, it fit perfectly! How do you explain this?? I have a way. G-O-D. Oh yeah, and I didn't tell you about the price... all for under $5K. So I ordered the stairs and had them shipped from Colorado.
But before the stairs could be installed, I had to get the hardwood floor finished in the living room. So here are pics of that project.
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My neighbor's son, Scott, helped me get the floor started. What a blessing! |
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Katie was trying not to freeze while overseeing my work... ha ha! |
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BTW... it was COOOLD while I was laying these floors. My little heater warmed me up for a minute at a time :) |
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The final piece of the front room! |