One small step for man...

I have been a child with aerospace and flight on the brain and in the heart since I was a weeeee tot. My parents tacked up a poster of Neil Armstrong in my dorm room as a surprise message when they dropped me off for life on my own. And I think at this point in my project, it is fitting to make an analogy here.

Pictured is the first tread on the staircase. It is a small task, this one tread but it represents a culmination of many months, many hands, and many pounds of flesh. This tread, and it's sixteen brethren, have been crafted from joists salvaged from the original 1850's structure. I have saved these joists from further damage and deterioration while I stripped the structure down to a salvageable shell. I spent hours carefully pulling hand-cut nails from them to give to a local artist. My nephew Addison spent hours cutting and sanding the blanks to a rough state. A friend, Nathan, spent hours making the final surface preparation and then applying three coats of polyurethane. And then I spent a day cutting them down, scribing the sides, and carefully easing them into place.

I have talked about making these stair treads from the beginning of this two-year journey. I have always felt they were a key aspect to my work here in Soulard and representative of what I want to accomplish: Being a good steward of the community, trying to honor the dedication and hard work of bootstrap people who saved this historic area, running a sustainable project that went beyond recycling cardboard and incorporated a cradle-to-grave approach.

I have had to wait and wait and wait to see how and if these treads would work. They need to meet today's code requirements but they are non-dimensioned lumber when plaster and lathe created straight, plumb walls. They need to meet the high finish specifications I have for this project and not look like old wood slapped down as a cheap attempt to pander to green building. And above all, they need to be the one example of what I embody as a carpenter, as a human.

Hope you had tissues available 'cause you might have needed to cry right there.

I am very near the end of the house portion of this project. The punch list is only half a piece of (recycled) cardboard. I am very very close. And I am very tired. And someone is going to get a gem of a house. Amen.