Project Overview & Background
This Santa Monica home is a 1920s Spanish Revival, and its original staircase had ninety years of wear: worn tread nosings, a handrail polished thin at the turns, and two loose newels. The homeowners explicitly did not want it to look restored.
That is a harder brief than a rebuild. We consolidated rather than replaced — the worn nosings were built up with matched Douglas fir and refinished to blend, the handrail was re-glued and left with its wear intact, and the newels were re-anchored from below so no new fixings show on the visible faces. The stair is now structurally sound and reads exactly as it did before, which was the point.
Structural Challenge:
Original 1920s Douglas fir has a colour and grain that modern kiln-dried fir does not match. Repair stock was sourced from reclaimed joists of a similar age so the built-up nosings would age consistently with the original treads.
Engineered Solution:
Consolidation over replacement: built-up nosings in period-matched reclaimed fir, re-glued original handrail, and newels re-anchored from below.
Guests do not notice anything was done, which is exactly what we hoped for.
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