With Christmas behind us and the company all gone it was time to get back to work on the house. Today's project was ambitious... applying and sculpting the fiberglass-reinfoirced-concrete through the stairway to the upstairs. We had previously welded a framework and applied the diamond lath. Today we would hide all the previous work and make the tree look like a tree.

We started at the top of the stairway and then worked our way down. Peter and I trowelled on the mix while big Matt worked the mixer to keep us supplied with the magic mud. We trowelled until almost 3:30 (about six hours) which meant we would be spending almost as many hours carving. The temperatures in the house were low and the humidity was high which meant the concrete would cure slow, giving us plenty of time to sculpt. Bec joined Peter and I in the sculpting process.

The first shot is from the top of the stairs looking down at Peter and Bec starting the carving process.

I took this picture from on top of the scaffold in the dining room where I was sculpting the outside of the tree. Peter and Rebecca are carving the inside of the tree.

The finished tree looks spectacular and is one of the most unique stairways I've seen, We purposely kept it narrow (three feet wide) to add to the magic and feeling of mystery. The first view shows the tree from the dining room. The oval shaped window looks into Phoebe's tree house outside on the patio.

LED lights will be hidden in the dark horizontal slot that goes up the stairs on both sides.

And here's a closeup shot of the top of the tree in the dining room. Potlights are imbedded into the tree to keep things nice and bright. The LED's will add to the magic and provide good light to the stairway treads.

Everything will be allowed to cure a few days before we begin the paint process.

-grampa dan