Tuesday, April 05, 2011

MoTrad House - the owner builds a stair

The owner buckled down and got to work this past weekend and built his own stair. With some inspiration from our friends at PostGreen Homes, developers of the famous 100k house project, the MoTrad House owner fabricated his own dual stringer stair, made from oriented strand beams.


He had priced out a custom made single steel stringer stair, for which he would still have made the thick wood treads. But alas the price for the steel was outside his value range. Thats a polite way to say it was too much. So confident, and industrious, and with a good role model, he forged ahead and made his own. He did still source a custom steel bracket to support the stringers at the top, but the rest was by the work of his own hands. And power tools.

More photos after the link below:

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5 comments:

  1. Wow. Really great looking. Is the oriented strand hard to cut? And will it suck up a lot of poly or whatever the owner finishes it with? Thanks to Greg and the owner for the steady stream of photos--an inspiring project.

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  2. I'm not really sure how the flake beam will behave when you finish it. Typically they don't get exposed and finished, so I would expect them to drink up a lot of finish, but then again all of the adhesive resin that bonds the beam may prevent that from happening.

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  3. This projekt is really amazing :) really great post.. Thanks to Greg and the owner for the steady stream of photos--an inspiring project.

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  4. really cool approach, especially with the owner getting hands-on! I'm a little surprised he didn't test finishes on it first (unless he's painting them instead of leaving the material exposed?)

    would have been great to set up a camera somewhere taking a picture every 1-5 minutes and do a time lapse of the stairs in progress...

    Thanks for sharing Greg

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  5. I think he was considering painting the stringer's black. He has lots of cut off pieces to test paint or stain on.

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