The landings for the stairway are built with some of the boards that came from the huge white oak tree from our property. After plaining the boards, Jon ran them through the drum sander, edged them to uniform widths, measured and cut them to length, and laid them. He drilled pilot holes before nailing them down with cut nails (square concrete nails).
The next day I stained the landings and stairway.
I took several photos of Jon sanding the beam, but I had to settle for this photo, since it had less dust spots. It is almost impossible to take good photos with all the saw dust flying around.
It was fun seeing the banister come together. Jon had visualized how it would look long before building it. The first summer we were here, Jon got permission to cut some of the pine trees that Jim, our neighbor, had planted too close together years ago for 4H. He was glad to have the trees thinned and we were glad to have the poles.
We lightly sanded the three 6X6 post and the 6X12 beam before staining them to keep the rough cut appearance. Jon added the shaker pegs. We may hang a hangman's noose on one of them. Hoyt Thomas, one of our sawyers, told us to leave a beam exposed to hang a hangman's noose, because we would want to hang ourselves after working with the rough cut boards. Jon and I have laughed many times about Hoyt's crooked boards and that the hangman's noose should be for Hoyt.
