Building Spiral Stairs for the Fling

When I got this kit, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it and I knew that I wanted access to the second floor. This presented a minor problem for me as it did not come with stairs. :/ I had never made my own stairs before, and after some consideration, decided to go with a spiral staircase. A regular staircase would have been doable, but would have taken up a considerable amount of viewing space for the paintings. So, here is how I made the spiral staircase.

I didn't take pictures of the construction process, but I wish I would have. Next time. My next build will be well documented! Anyway, I used a dowel (standard size for that packet you can get at Walmart or Michaels), a straw, spindles, jewelry chain and pretty bauble beads.

First, I cut out the stair shapes and then drilled matching holes into the narrower end of them.

***Next time, I would make them a little bigger than they are now. They are quite narrow and a little short.

Then I cut a 3/4 inch section of straw and slid it on the bottom of the dowel. Then I slid on a step from the top end and pushed it all the way down to the piece of straw. The straw acts as a base and a support to hold the step. I then alternated straw and step until I got to the top. After all the steps were on the dowel and spaced appropriately, I spun them around in a fan shape, creating the *spiral* to the spiral staircase.

Next step was to glue the spindles to each step so they could hold the chain railing I was planning on making. Now, in real life, this wouldn't really work, because there is nothing supporting the steps themselves from busting in two beneath your feet. The change to be made here is to take something like toothpicks and make a support from the back left corner of the bottom step to the front left corner of the one above it. My steps weren't wide enough to do this. :(

So, we will just pretend that the size of mini people makes them SO light that they don't need extra supports. :D

I then stuck it in the build to see if it would fit right. During the dry fit stage, I had cut a circular hole in the roof/floor. Here it is in the house before I painted it:

Once everything seemed good, I then painted it using Krylon spray paint in black. Then, I carefully glued the two lengths of chain around and secured them to each spindle. When they had dried, I attached beads to the top of each spindle to finish it off and give it some whimsy. I didn't permanently attach it to the house until the very end since it was in my way.