New Stairs

On Nov. 9th my good friend, Wendy (Wendell) Shiffler helped me on build and install the stairs to the second floor. We knocked it out in about 7 hours. I had spent a few hours the day before sanding and rounding the corners of the rough cut lumber. The wood was really wet, having been milled from fresh cut trees not long ago at the local saw mill. So the stairs will have to dry for a month or more before I can put a coat of polyurethane on them to protect the steps, etc. For now I've got scrap pieces of carpet on the steps, because I'll be going up and down a good deal as I start to finish the upstairs. That is the next project.

They are really solid stairs. All the lumber (white spruce) is a true 2 inches thick. The stringers are 2x12s and the steps are 2x10s. Later on, as I have more time I may replace the 4x4 legs of the landing with real logs.
The house is pretty humid these days with the house logs drying and now all the lumber from the stairs drying. The hygrometer (humidity gauge) that I have reads between 50 and 60%. I've yet to have any static electricity from my bed sheets or clothes!! A rare thing here in the dry Arctic.