The Neubau and Altbau are joined together in such a way that there is a height difference between the floors. This leads to an interesting stair situation that requires a creative solution. Loyal readers will recall that I built a short set of stairs not too long ago, thereby eliminating one set that needed to be built and saving some money at the same time. Yeah! However, we still have 4 short sets of stairs and 1 long set of stairs that need to be built. Boo!

Finding someone to do this, a so called Treppenbauer, has been a pain in the ass. We had offers from I think 4 different companies, but we always felt like they were jerking us around or not taking us seriously. Enter Die Tischlerin: Dagmar Meyer. Meike found an ad for her in a magazine. Originally we just wanted to have her do the kitchen, but when she said that she does stairs as well, we went to a house in Hamburg to look at a staircase she did about 10 years ago. It was awesome. And the price was fair. So we gave her the contract. Yesterday, we went to her workshop to see our stairs in progress.

From what I can gather, the company has been in the family in some form or another since 1873 and Frau Meyer is now the 4th generation to run it. If you look at some of her projects on the website linked above, or on her Facebook page, you will see that she knows what she is doing.

Anyway, on to our stairs….

They started out as one or more large beech trees standing among these just behind the workshop. Not a bad supply of wood, eh?

The fresher scraps of wood you see on the pile are some of what is left of the trees used to make the stairs.

Here are some pictures of the workshop where the magic happens. There are amazing tools here.

Here are shots of the stairs in progress….

Here are some of the balusters that will be holding up the handrail.

The one big staircase is shown here.

Here it is again.

Here is a future handrail or newel. I’m not sure.

More pieces

While we were there, we discussed a few planning details and made sure we were on the right track.

The plans were made by Herr Meyer (Generation #3) show here.

Computers? We don’t need no stinking Computers! That’s right. Measure twice, cut once.

So the stairs are coming along. Hopefully they will be done and installed in a month perhaps, maybe longer. Like I mentioned earlier, we originally contacted die Tischlerin in order to build our kitchen. That is almost always the last thing to be installed in the house, so that will have to wait a bit. We are still trying to decide what color the cabinets should be.