That is pretty, flyleft. I think the reasons it works are the very high ceiling, the continuing brick work on the wall surrounding the mantel, and the raised hearth. Although that vertical brick makes me wonder about maybe doing stone of some sort in a vertical brick pattern instead of the square limestone tiles. Too trendy perhaps?

I drew the original plans and I'm drawing these. I would have to get out there and be climbing all over on a ladder to get lots of measurements. And it would have to be done after the concrete blocks foundation is in place to know exactly how its height relates to the house. The carpenter that is actually doing the work would be held up while all of this is done. His crew can stick frame it faster than that. I don't know what putting a steel roof on the house will do to the roof measurements. It would mean putting that roof on before I start taking any measurements. Otherwise I run into problems such as What if the roof came out higher than expected, or What if the garage floor turned out lower than expected. I have to remove about 8 inches of dirt. I can't be certain enough until it's actually being built. I'd love to use trusses. I just can't see it happening. Pooh Bear

I went the full length of the joists but I used 8' 2x8s so each one has at least one joint in it. None of the sister joists I added bear on either the wall at one end or the steel beam at the other. I just notched them so they cleared. I had a helper hold most of them in place while I nailed them. Toward the end or the project I used a small jack (3 ton) and a scrap of 2x8 as a post to press them into place and that worked better. I don't think I would use too big a jack or too stout of a post to press them into place. I hear you can do a lot of damage to a house with a 30 ton jack. We just jacked them up until we took them 1/8" or so up from where we could place them by hand. Bear in mind my floor has a significant amount of sag in it. You can pull a string and see how much sag your floor has. If it is little to none I would go really easy on the jacking. Actually, if it was me and I pulled a string the length of all the joists and there was no sag I'd just run a row of nail-less bridging on either side of the existing blocking and see if that solves the problem. It will only cost you about $20 and an hour of your time to try it. I think the bridging I used was about $.70 a piece. I put one row under the living room where it wasn't easy to sister due to all the mechanical run between, thru and under the joists there. It helped a lot and only cost me $14 -- a 16 wide foot room takes about 20 pieces of bridging for one row. My floor is significantly underbuilt by todays joist span tables. The part that I sistered was under a newly installed tile floor that was clearly not going to last unless I did something about the flex in the structure. Otherwise I would have just used more bridging. From what you've written I dont think your floor is underbuilt but that would depend on the species used for the joists. Doug Fir or SYP 16' 2x10 on 16" should be adequate but just barely! In the end its your house -- make it the way YOU like it!

Greg_R, This free spanning staircase is much narrower than my other set of stairs, so these are the stairs that were ordered for this location. I've been staring at those staircases for the past few days. My conclusion at this point is that this is the way this installer has been building his staircases (supposedly for the past 60 years that they claim to be in business)--VERY SHODDILY. Structurally this staircase is very unsound. There is no support at all under the stringer at the lower end. At the upper end, the stringer has no ledger behind the stringer to brace it. And the stringer is inadequate with no throat at all on the wall side. I began looking at staircase building websites and technical specs from boise cascade and trus-joist and my staircases don't resemble the general design theme at all. When we first complained, the staircase installer stopped by, gave me an attitude, shimmed a bit at the upper end and ignored us after that. He only responded after receiving our structural engineer's report about faulty design/installation. They continued to suggest using two L-shaped metal braces bolted to the walls running across the staircase and bolted to the free-span stringer. Our engineer said that will not work. So the installer said that they will do whatever the engineer designs. There are way too many problems with that set of stairs that I feel that they should be redesigned correctly instead of applying band-aids to it. I will post more pictures this evening and an update when the situation changes. Thank you.