Darryn Jamieson
Bardon, Qld

Single stringer staircase

‘With a baby on the way I wasn’t interested in just giving the designated baby’s room a fresh coat of paint. The room was a typical masonite-lined room from a post-war home. It had always bugged me how the walls seemed to bulge under the pressure of the terracotta roof. I decided to strip the room and reline it with Gyprock.

'Once I made the decision to rip it down it came down with relative ease, and I was into the adjoining room before I knew it. With a mountain of masonite stripped from the studs I took a step back to admire the speed with which I had managed to transform our two front rooms. I realised the two rooms combined would make a fantastic master bedroom and we could make our old bedroom the new baby’s room.

‘With this decision made I realised there were two major hurdles. Firstly I would have to move the staircase that led to the lower living quarters. Secondly I needed to convince my heavily pregnant wife that I could rebuild a master bedroom and a staircase before the baby’s arrival.
‘I wanted to build a staircase reflecting my passion for recycled timber, so I set about designing a set of stairs based around a single stringer. I managed to purchase an old red ironbark bridge timber 270 x 200 x 6.2m and set up a series of string lines to take out the bow with an electric planer. The rise and run had to be chiselled out by hand and most of it was into endgrain taking hours of painstaking chiselling with a 3lb steel mallet and a set of steel chisels.

‘The treads are laminated 6 x 2’ rafters I scored from the local demolition yard. Once the rise and run and the mortise and tenons were cut, the components were transported to the site. Weighing in at approx. 350–400kgs of solid timber it took four burly guys to carry it down the side of the house and lift it into place with a block and tackle.

‘The staircase was delivered with weeks to spare and complemented with stainless steel balustrading and 10mm laminated glass.

'Reuben Alexander Jamieson was born on 3.13pm on the 13th of September.’