Turn of the Century --Extended

In this story, one staircase begat another.  My staircase seen in the earlier blog, "Restoration Woodworking" was seen during a Summit Ave walking tour, and I was invited to take on this new project  --copy an existing  turn of the century staircase, as an exact replica and extending it into the newly developed attic space.

Here is a photo of the existing first floor entrance to the stairs.  It was a pretty swell house!

And here on the second floor, the the new stairs begin their extension into the attic space.  Of course, first we had to tear out the ceiling, while the clients were living there, with a child and expecting another.  Due date happened to correspond to our projected and hoped for completion date.  A little bit of "protection" was in order.

We contracted a millwork to cut the knives and mill matching trims and handrail.  A company we found on the internet copied our ballasters.

   

The converted attic completely matched the existing house, providing an additional bathroom, bedroom, study and family room.  

And basically, short of minor punch list stuff, we attained substantial completion by due date.

-Bill

kitchens

So, its been 6 years already, six years of exclusive, well, mostly exclusive, designing and installing kitchens, Ikea kitchens (those previous photos are all Ikea kitchens), combinations, variations and customized derivations of Ikea kitchens too--  a lot of kitchens.  You can do alot with Ikea's product.  Our company has been a certified installer of Ikea kitchens throughout the Twin Cities area--  has been until last September, when Ikea corporate decided for corporate reasons to unify activities with a nationwide installation service. 

Hey, it was a great run. 

I did install many a kitchen, honed my design skills,enjoyed many customers and learned the kitchen world inside and out-- tweeking, twisting and creating customized results with standardized off the shelf products.   I produced suburban woody kitchens, severe hipster kitchens, middle class family kitchens, compact bungalow efficiency kitchens, strictly functional office kitchens, as well as minimalist modernist, exclusively sophisticated "state of the art" euro-designer, Brad and Angelina looking kitchens.   Styles are languages, you have to use one to make art.

I'll show you what I mean in later posts.

-Bill

               kitchen

               

                                                         

                                                        

 



-Bill