Catwalk of the Goats

"I made my way to the poor child, who was one of the dirtiest little unfortunates I ever saw, and found him very hot and frightened, and crying loudly, fixed by the neck between two iron railings, while a milkman and a beadle, with the kindest intentions possible, were endeavouring to drag him back by the legs, under a general impression that his skull was compressible by those means."
—Charles Dickens, Bleak House

We live in more enlightened (if less colorful) days, and so are constrained by regulations recommending that the space between railings in a residence frequented by small children must not exceed four inches (sometimes 3.5 inches, depending on the jurisdiction)—smaller than the diameter of the head of potential little unfortunates. As it turns out, this is also the size of a typical goat's head, and so O. G. Sam decided that our stairway and catwalk inside, and deck railings outside, would be lined with goat fencing: a grid of galvanized steel with openings roughly four by four inches.

The framework for the goat fencing is galvanized angle rails, lengths of speed rail, fittings for affixing the speed rail to the stairway and decks, and lots of bolts.

Goat fencing comes in rolls of flexible wire, but we used heavier, rigid fencing.

The Sharp boys: Asher, last seen tearing down the old house, Dave, and Robert, Dave's brother, who came down from Minnesota for a few weeks to help engineer and build the railings (and install the steel siding—but that's a later post).

The last step was topping the railing with a wooden handrail.

You can see in this shot that we now have steps to the basement equipped with a bannister with a return to the wall at each end, as requested by the county building inspector. 

Step Right Up

Much as we all enjoyed climbing scaffolding to get to the loft, once the floor was installed downstairs, it was time to put in a stairway. Because of the look we wanted, it had to be fabricated on site.

We chose to make the stringers for the stairway out of the laminated boards the framers used for the house structure. They are stronger than wood of the same thickness (at least the wood we were considering). It took some sanding to get them smooth enough to have a relatively uniform surface when painted.

The painted braces drying on the beam to the lower deck

Dave moved a single temporary tread up the stairway to kneel on as he added braces.

Dave pretending to find funny the inevitable "Stairway to Heaven" reference.

Braces installed

You can see the oak floor hasn't been laid in the loft yet. Something about the floor installers not wanting to climb up and down a ladder during installation. Some people . . . .

Since there was still so much work to be done upstairs, we installed temporary treads for the duration of major construction; that way the permanent treads wouldn't be damaged.

Best not to look down. The permanent steps will be deeper, so the view won't be quite as scary.

Next: the galvanized railing.

Uplight, Out of Sight

The big room presents some challenges to heating and cooling the house evenly throughout the year, as well as challenges to lighting the space.

O. G. Sam chose two fans for the room, sleek but also reminiscent of a fan from, say, a hard-boiled detective's office.

The fans do double duty as light fixtures.

In order to light the room without creating a strobe effect with the fans, Sam designed an uplight: a galvanized tray with LED tube lighting inside.

Dave figured out how to fabricate and hang the trays. This involved cutting, bending, burnishing, and cleaning the steel, which now has the finish of a favorite kitchen knife.

Electrician Sam made the uplights work.

Oh, yeah: they dim. Now—after Dave slithered through a hole he cut in the extremely narrow attic in order to run a low-voltage line to each of the trays. LED dimming is still an inexact science.

The rat-run from outside

And inside

Two wires now coil around the cables suspending the lights.

Fans and lights operational. Note the pink shift the lights caused in the camera.

Now that we have some light in the place, it's time to build stairs and railings.