Stairs

Friday night I woke up at 3 am and realized I was very unhappy with the choice I had made for the new stairwell. This feeling had been building all day long, but it wasn't until the early morning hour that it hit me that there had to be a better way of doing this. The main qualification for this project is that there is a door to the stairs that can be shut to close off the downstairs from the upstairs. All of the things I had came up with had the door at the bottom of the stairs, this meant that the stairs had to become steeper in order to have to space at the foot of the stairway to accommodate a door and let it have room to swing open. After cutting the stringers for the new stairs I had this feeling of dread that I was going to have to go up and down these things several times a day. Espicallly down, I am not very gracefull and down could mean DOWN.
So between the hours of 3am and 5am I came up with what I thought would work...the door at the top. I waited until 7am before I actually got up and got my tape measure to make sure it would work. Yes it would. Now I had to clear it with Sarah, I don't think this was the conversation she wanted to wake up to on Saturday morning but my helpers were going to be here at 8 am and I had to break the news to them and be ready to do some work. Sarah was fine with it all and so was my brother in law who is a carpenter by trade, he said he thought it was a much better idea than what I had come up with before. So, we headed out to breakfast and then off to get some materials.
I am really pleased with what we accomplished. I got to keep my old, long, comfortable stairs. Sarah will get her door at the top, and we even got a new beam installed so the upstairs doesn't become the downstairs in the future.
I know this is probably confusing to many of you who have never visited our home. I will try to give a little house/pottershop history later on in another post. I slept well last night and I am actually looking forward to the next time we all get together to build a closet, and do some electrical work. Oh yea and move a water line. (The list is very long).