Circular Stair - Part 1

Real-life inspiration for my mini-version

The spiral staircase is an elegant, beautiful and utterly silly invention. To be effective as a staircase that allows for a person of average athleticism to travel to a second floor as well as the moving of furniture (otherwise, you'd have to use a crane, rope or other mechanical means to haul your solid oak library desk up over the balcony), it has to take up a lot of floor space.  And if you don't have the floor space, then it becomes a steep incline best assailed by people who climb mountains in their spare time.  It is, of course, quintessentially Victorian.

The Fairfield does not have a lot of floorspace to convert to stairs.  But it demanded a lovely, grand, eye-catching spiral staircase. Here's how I did it.

Updates & News

It's been some time since I updated.  A LOT of time, I guess!  And since then, a few things have happened:

Greenleaf's Fairfield Dollhouse

First, I decided to postpone the "big" dollhouse (Clockwork House) in favor of starting smaller.  I made that decision because it was moving into the rainy months and I didn't want to be trying to cut the wood in the rain, plus we are considering moving, and I really didn't want to have to figure out how to move an assembled 4 ft long dollhouse. But I also made the decision because I wanted to hone my skills and build an even finer steampunk mansion.  Which is why I decided to start on something smaller - a half-scale kit, The Fairfield.  I have liked this kit for a long time and when I found it on ebay for $25, I decided to go for it.  I promised myself that I would just do a straight build - no experimental stuff or kit-bashing involved - and I promised my husband it would cost less because, well ya know, everything is half the size.