Stairs with an Attitude

This graphic shows how the house will appear from the northeast.  Note that there is much less glass here, since this is the direction from which much of the winter weather will come.  You are standing (so to speak) about where the detached garage will be located, giving immediate access to the service porch.  Just inside the porch door is a combination mud, storage, and laundry room.  The little window in this north wing serves the half-bath.  The triple window immediately to the left is in the dining area, with the guest bedroom above.

Clergy have terrible book habits.  I admit I'm hopelessly addicted.  In fact, I must have 75 boxes of books in storage, in addition to those in my church office and apartment.  During the design phase I kept coming back to this problem of The Books.  What to do?... what to do?  I could give them all to St. Frigida's Episcopal Church at MacMurdo Sound.  I could put them in a dumpster by night (I'd get caught).  I could build a house with a handsome cherry-paneled library (alas, no lotto wins to pay for it), or put them in the guest bedroom (guests would have to sleep standing up, like the Borg in their recharge nooks).  Then, in a magazine, I saw a house with bookcases lining the walls of a stairway.  Wizard!  What an elegant solution!

Thus, on both sides of the stairwell "box" — just to the left of the dining area in the perspective above — there will be bookcases rising from floor level on the ground floor to above head level on the second floor.  To provide access to the shelving there will be an "open" staircase, U-shaped, with metal supports centered, treads bolted to the supports, and no risers.  The absence of risers will allow light from the two windows to shine through, giving the stairs a sense of floating.  The upper window in the stairwell "box" is at the landing, with a window seat.  Some parts of the book shelving will be hard to reach, so I'll need a ladder with extendable legs on one side.  Yes, Virginia, they do make such ladders! •••