Weekly Photo Challenge: Change | The Daily Post

These stairs were a Trademe score…I noticed them on the ‘closing soon’ page with 20 minutes to run and after a quick phone confab, we tossed in a bid for $2k fully expecting to be outbid by all the watchers ( the stairs are, after all, genuine rimu – and the spiral hand rail is a single piece) and were blown away to pick them up for the mere $600…

We were further amazed when we met the seller in Wellington that he had intended to only list them once – after being nagged into it by a friend – before converting them into firewood. He also threw in, at no extra costs. a complete set of rimu kitchen cupboard doors which had been destined for the firewood heap as well. Even so, he had meticulously itemised and numbered every piece so that the joiners were able to re-assemble it with no difficulty. They did have to take all the parts to their workshop some 55km away as that was the only place with a high enough ceiling to assemble and work on it.

Above you see us as the assembled stairs are delivered back to Raurimu, as we head-scratched and considered how to get them in through the front door (fortunately a double door) and into position (assembled, this thing wasn’t light!!). We managed though:

…and these are the horrible things that we got rid off in favour of the spiral – the drop down the central beam was a good metre or so – awesome with small children – NOT!!!