Venice Beach Loft Winding Staircase
Posted: July 25, 2010, 4:49 pm

This is a winding stair case I built in an art loft in Venice, CA. It was originally a metal spiral stair case that was painted sky blue. You can still see part of the original stairs that I cut off under the top 5 steps that I built in the bottom right picture above. I used them as brackets for the new steps.

The steps themselves are made of true 2" reclaimed wood from a local reclaimed lumber yard in Pacoima, CA. As you can see the bottom half of the stair case is boxed in which serves to provide a space the home owners plan to use as storage space and also hides the stringers.

The top half is secured to a the pole side with 1 3/4" lags from under the welded brackets (which are actually the old steps cut down as I mentioned above). The outer ends are actually sort of hanging from the spindles which are made up of 5/8" tubing sandwiched between each step and 1/4" L metal on the wall side and a wood beam on the landing side unsing 1/2" all-thread to tie it all together. Its actually pretty sturdy although there is a very slight amount of lateral play which isnt really a big deal as the vast majority of any stress on them is directed downward, not from side to side.

This project was quite a challenge as each of the top 6 steps is made up of 3 pieces of wood and figuring out the angles for each step, piece of wood, as well as the end cuts was at times mind boggling. I suppose one of these days I will find some kind of software that figures this kinda thing out for me; but that can wait until I'm old and to tired to get the wheels upstairs workin hard from time to time!