The original staircase of the house had been a nightmare from the dark side.

I beams had been attached to the wall in a pattern that was uneven which resulted in each step having a slightly different height and clearance width.

So an important aspect of this project's staircase design was correcting the poor placement of the original treads.

The original staircase had a custom built tubular steel welded hand railing. The stair treads themselves were plywood screwed together around the I beams. The finish was simply carpet.

So I removed the old staircase, enlarged the stair well and increased the head clearance. The new staircase was and built of custom milled treads with standard rails, balustrades, and newel posts. It took considerable skill to get the tread height and widths to be uniform. I had to cut a groove and then go back with a power planer to get the proper height. To finish the project off I custom turned 4 newel post caps out of laminated 3/4" oak plank.

The new oak staircase was finished with Watco Danish furniture oil. Watco is linseed oil based with several different colors and strength of color. I prefer to use furniture oil on any interior projects as you will never get chips and dents do not check the surface of the finish as they would with polyurethane.

The new oak staircase turned out beautifully.
The custom quality of the finely sanded oak and the carefully executed construction added a special value to this beautiful custom built oak staircase which replaced a shabby poorly constructed steel and plywood staircase.