The farmhouse spiral staircase came out of the paint shop several weeks back and was installed. However, I was waiting for the stair treads. That wait is over and done.

Back when I was planning the kitchen and chose to use bamboo, I visited ECO Supply in Richmond, Virginia. While there, Greg introduced me to some other materials I might be interested in – one of which was PaperStone. PaperStone is made of 100% post consumer material (either cardboard or standard office paper) and uses a cashew nut shell liquid based resin. The most common use of PaperStone is as a counter top material.

After discussing my ideas with Greg, I chose to use 3/4" PaperStone in Mocha for the treads on the spiral Staircase, the fireplace mantle and the window-box sills. The treads needed to have a series of curved cuts so I worked with Aaron at Acorn Fabrication who have a CNC machine and experience working with PaperStone. Aaron picked up the stock, machined my parts and delivered everything back to ECO Supply so I could pick it up along with some other supplies.

I did the final milling of the treads. This consisted of easing the edges with a 1/4" round-over bit in my router and boring holes for all of the mounting hardware. I have chosen to leave the handrail off. With such a large diameter stair, the natural tendency is to rest your hand on the pole. This aligns your feet with the most comfortable rise/run tread ratio which also happens to be well inside of the mid-point on the treads (leaving ample space out to the edge and alleviating vertigo). In the future, when the second floor becomes more used, I will install the balusters and handrail. For now, I want to place planters on some of the treads – spider plants and other ivy.

The finish on the treads starts with a urethane sealer I created by mixing 50:50 of semi-gloss floor urethane and ‘reducer’. I applied two coats. After it dried, I lightly scuffed it using a scotch brite pad on an palm sander. Then I applied a coat of paste wax and buffed it out. The result look like the leather blotter of an old writing desk but is extremely hard.

I finished and install the fireplace mantle much the same as the stair treads. I still have the window box sills left.

It was a marathon session with some “creative CYA” but most of the spiral staircase is it.

Still to be done is the wood treads for the risers along with the balusters and handrail. If it were not such a huge safety and code violation, I’d love to leave the balusters and handrail off as the free floating treads look cool.

A curious coincidence is that each riser weights 42 pounds which is right in the sweet spot for a curling stone!

I was asked how I did the install without help. The short answer is “very carefully”. The long answer is that I built a pair of “holding” jigs – one at the top of the center pole and one in the middle. I first mixed up a small batch of epoxy and buttered the concrete floor to install the base plate. (Later, I drilled the concrete for a pare of holding pins I made and used JB Weld to make those permanent.) I then brought the 90lb center pole in and placed to over the center sleeve of the base plate and secured it with the two holding jigs. With a 12’ ladder next to the pole, I picked up a riser; climbed the ladder; remove the top holder; slid the riser over the top of the pole; reattached the holder; slid the riser down to the middle holder; detached it; slide the riser down the remainder; and replaced the middle holder. Rinse and repeat 12 more times. The last piece was the top platform which is installed much like a riser only it also gets attached to the rim of the hole in the second floor using lag bolts.

So, to the point of this post – any bets on the date and time I first hit my head on one of the risers ?

What’s with all the cryptic Facebook posts and tweets ?! The short answer is that the farmhouse is finally getting it’s large spiral staircase.

The staircase arrived in pieces back in May – primarily because a deal is a deal and I had to order it back in February and I could not delay delivery any longer. So, it has sat on a pallet in the workshop for 6 months … all 1100 lbs of it !

The entire process started with finding an automotive restoration shop to find where they get their shop supplies. As luck would have it, I found a hot rod shop that branched out to sell the paints they used on their projects.

They matched the color chip I brought in and worked with me for the other supplies – white primer, catalyst, hardener, strainers, mixing cups, bonding agent, and other incidental supplies.

For the uninitiated, let’s just say a gallon of automotive paint runs about $100 and by the time you add a gallon of primer and the necessary additives, the materials swelled past $350. To be honest, that’s actually a pretty good deal but it’s still a bit of sticker shock when you have not done it for a while.

I planned to start over my end-of-year holiday break. But I got sick, then the weather turned too cold to paint, then I had business travel. Finally, this week I was home, healthy, and warm (well, warm enough).

I prep over my lunch break and shoot primer just before dinner. I have just enough time to shoot the finish color and let it harden before the shop drops below the safe temperature.

Another note for the uninitiated, these paint systems have "windows" of time between coats. Where as your typical house paint has minimum drying times, automotive epoxies and enamels have maximum times. If you cant get the finish color over the primer before the allotted time, you have to shoot primer again to reset the clock.

Anyway, over the past few evenings, I’ve managed all of the risers and the top platform along with the base plate, top cap, and one section of the top rail. I still have the 270 degree radius perimeter rail at the top of the stairs, all 52 balusters, and the hand rail. … the fun never ends here on the Salmon Farm !

There are some things you can do when having a 100% custom kitchen built – assuming you’re working with the Rod Tidwell cabinet shop. Two of those are "what to do with the space under the kitchen sink?" and "how to hid the dishwasher?"

The typical solution under the kitchen sink is to install a set of doors and just hide everything. However, if you want some organization and you are installing drawers in all of your base cabinets, you might consider a split drawer design. The idea is to install two narrow drawers that fit to either side of the plumbing. In my case, I designed the plumbing under the sink to all line up front to back and thus maximize the available space to either side. In keeping with the look of the other cabinets, I wanted a single drawer front. As you can see in the photos, the large drawer front is attached to two narrow drawers.There is plenty of drawer space and it still leaves clearance for the plumbing.

Concealing the dishwasher is personal choice. Some people want the front to match the cabinets while others want it to match the appliances. There are special dishwashers with unfinished fronts designed to take a custom panel. This may seem strait forward but there are some caveats. Not all panel designs will match up to the dishwasher attachments points. I would go further to say *most* cabinet designs will require the installer to get creative. For example, to insure clearance when opening the dishwasher, the bottom of the panel front was beveled on the back side and the supplied metal cover was lowered.  The larger issue will the the handles. The dishwasher requires a reasonable amount of force to release the spring loaded catch when opening. The typical panel front dishwasher does not allow for pull hardware that mounts from the back; however hardware that mounts to the front is weaker. Add that a panel front (rails, stiles, and a panel in the middle) has only a thin layer of wood for the hardware attach points. All this is to say that you might experience some additional costs from your cabinet installer or some grumblings or a less than perfect job … hopefully not all three and ideally none at all. My solution was to two fold. First, I used a urethane glue and add a filler band of thin material to the back of the panel where the hardware would install. Note: The material must not extend beyond the back side of the rails and stiles holding the panel. Second, after pre-drilling the panel for the bin-pull hardware, I used a slightly smaller bit and predrilled into the metal face skin of the dishwasher. Note: Be careful to just penetrate the metal so as not to hit anything that might be inside.

After installing the panel to the dishwasher front, I then installed the pull hardware with the screws now having a good "bite" into the panel, the filler band, and the face skin of the dishwasher.

The three pantry cabinets are in. There were lots if issues. All told, I’d say there were 8 things that did not come out nearly But, of those, only two can be discovered and then only by close scrutiny. All of the others were addressed with an excess of labor. I am staring my graduate studies in "craftsmanship". (They say, the difference between a carpenter and a craftsman is how well they hide their mistakes.") I had more practice with this project than I care to admit.

I definitely learned a lot. And for anyone who is considering building pantry cabinets as large as these, here are a few tips …

• If you are going to paint them, definitely use MDF for it’s superior stability. All three of the pantry doors had an 1/8" warp. Two bow out in the middle so the latch resolves those. I’ll need to add a back stretcher to the third door.
• Add a fixed shelf in the middle of the carcasses for stability. At a full 8 feet tall, there is just not enough stability in the sides of the cabinets. Keeping everything square and true is nearly impossible and an 1/8" error will show if you are building inset doors.
• Seriously ask yourself if you want inset doors rather than overlay doors. If you want inset doors, repeat this bullet point. An 1/8" error shows and while it’s easy to get get your lengths and widths accurate, consider an 1/8th of an inch error over 8 feet is only 0.075 degrees !
• Rather than one full height door, consider two doors, one above the other. They will work well with that fixed middle shelf.
• Invest in joint connector screws and nuts. There may be other ways of pulling adjacent cabinets together but these are easy and can be added as needed during the installation process.
• Get help on installation day. The larger the cabinet, the more likely of bumping something and scratching that finish you worked so hard to achieve.

Given how small the kitchen is relative to the amount of cooking I do, the pantry is a great addition. Storage is the key to shopping on a budget because you can buy extras of non-perishable items when they are on sale and you can take advantage of big box shopping – especially when that big box store is a half day trip away.

I built a wide shallow pantry. This has a few advantages. First, the light from the kitchen is more than enough for the pantry and there are no dark deep places. Additionally, shallow shelves prevent stuff being pushed to the back and getting lost. Even with my wide stiles, I have about 76 inches of usable width. Each pantry has 8 shelves and could easily accommodate two more. That provides over 60 feet of shelf space. When it comes to canned goods, I can go 4 deep with bulk items. With shallow shelves, it’s not necessary to put different items in a row.

I still have the "bulkhead" cabinet that goes above the pantry. Then I will add the base trim for both the pantry and back side of the peninsula cabinets plus the toe kick for the rest of the base cabinets.

The next project is the large spiral staircase !

This weekend was dedicated to building the pantry cabinets. The pantry is tall (floor to 9 foot ceiling), wide (just under 8 feet), and shallow (interior shelves are just 12 inches deep). The last dimension means I won’t lose stuff to the back of shelves and it also means the light from the kitchen will illuminate the contents not matter how tight the shelves, so I won’t need to install lighting within the cabinets.

After cleaning the shop (it’s nice to start with a clean space), I set out to build the carcasses, and layout the shelving. The back fits into dados on the sides. The bottom fits into dados on the sides and back. The top fits into a rabbit on the sides and back. The sides were easy. I installed my stacked dado blades into the table saw and rand all the sides. Then I had a brain gap. With the sides and back being a full 8 feet, running a dado across was dangerous without a special jig and an extra set of hands. Then I remembered you can dado with a router if you have the right size bit. fortunately, my old router had an edge guide so after a bit of experimenting, I was set to dado for the bottom panel and rabbit for the top.

I finished the glue ups of the three cabinets and did a little more cleanup with the plan to start face frames on Sunday. However, that plan was premature.

Each pantry cabinet already weighs about 60 lbs and given the size, they need to be assembled inside the kitchen. So, I decided I would layout the necessary blocking and spacers for the eventual cabinet installation. This will help with the rest of the manufacturing and will let me separate the three to move then into the kitchen while insuring they will go back together with nearly invisible seams. The blocking also helps keep the cabinets true given their large size and minimal internal support structure along the front.

I took advantage of the relative mobility of the separate cabinets to drill for all of the shelf pins. Some of the shelves will be rather close together given the pantry will hold canned goods. There will likely be as many as eight shelves (plus the bottom) in each cabinet. That will provide better than 50 square feet of shelf space. this does not include the long term storage in the bin that will go above the pantry cabinets.

Each row of shelf pins has 19 holes. That makes the math 19 holes per row, by 4 rows (front and back for left and right), and 3 cabinets. My wrists are not happy but the job if finished. If you drilling more than just a few shelf pin holes, the jig is well worth it. The plastic is not the valuable piece by itself. You could make that yourself from scrap wood. The sleeved, self centering drill bit is what makes this work.

I also built the base (not pictured).

I’ll spend evenings this week building the shelves. They will consist of a 3/4" of the same prefinished plywood used on are carcasses and will have a 1" front edge of bamboo. The extra 1/4" will create a small lip on the under side of each shelf and add additional strength and stability for canned goods and other heavy storage.