More stair building details

The end of September was busy with Ronn (the log builder) and Dan (the railing expert) living with us while we completed the transition from the raw black cherry, white pine and cedar to finished railings and stairs.  The first photo is the nearly completed stairs to the loft.  Note that on the left hand side is a gap to accommodate a cultured stone finish on the wall, we have a retired stone mason to help us with this. There are shims at the bottom of the stairs which will be removed as we carry out three more seasons of dropping the jacks for the log wall shrinkage.  In other words, we bring the stairs down with the walls.  After the requisite heating seasons, the structure will be fully stable and we can set the permanent shimming on to the final flooring.

Note "ET" the extraterrestrial mounted on top of the bottom newel post, this is a hard maple tree burl, formed from disease or interference in the tree's development.  This is a close up of ET.    

Dan, Bob and me are shown in the process of preparing ET for installation.   Originally we were thinking of mounting a wood carving on the newel post, but the burl seems eclectic enough to suit us. 

I then feature a detail of one of the ash "twisters" in the stair railing spindles.  This is a small ash tree that twisted because it was growing together with a vine.  We cut this piece in Colborne and it has been drying and seasoning naturally, it made three spindles, two of which are shown installed in the following picture.  One more was put in after this photo was taken to go in at the bottom by the newel post because a space greater than four inches remained there, making it not building code compliant. Now that it is in, we are fully compliant!