It truly looks amazing!   A view from the second floor looking down on the staircase

A view looking down from the upper end of the stairs

Another view from the top of the stairs

A view from the master bedroom doorway

and from the NanaWall of the living room.

It does look quite spectacular in real life. 

It will certainly be a beautiful staircase, but.......  there are just a few problems to overcome before the sweeping staircase actually fits into its home...  Yes, it is true, the staircase does not fit!  And, needless, to say, we are not thrilled!

The first problem encountered involves the connection points at the bottom and top of the stairs.  The bottom of the stairs is now attached to the two brackets shown in the last entry.  However, with those two brackets fixed, the top of the staircase does not reach the steel plate it is supposed to attach to at the top.  So there is a big gap at the top of the staircase.....

and not only is it a gap, but it is not an even gap.  That is, the gap on the inner radius of the stairs is smaller than the gap at the outer radius of the stairs.  So not only will the stairs need to come forward about three inches, but it also needs to rotate slightly as it comes forward.

The best part about this mishap is that the representative from the stair manufacturer, Arcways, has left.  He was only scheduled to be here for two days and today was his second day.  Apparently, the installation support is only to get the stairs in approximately the right location.  I didn't notice that in the contract.  Therefore, we are left with a fully formed staircase (i.e. the two sections have been successfully put together) which does not quite fit in the fully framed house.  The macro-manipulation of the stairs to get them fitted properly then falls on the shoulders of our contractor.

Even better though, the outer stringer of the stair overlaps one set of the windows in the rotunda.  Yes, the windows are set and sealed (all of these art glass windows leaked the first time they were "waterproofed" so they have already been resealed once) and the drywall is up and the exterior has all three layers of stucco applied, but the windows are in the wrong place...

Again, we are not thrilled.  We are not quite sure how the windows ended up at just the wrong height.  I know that we set them at the same height from their respective stair tread so that they would fall the same amount from window to window, but somehow, the stair appears to not have been considered in this calculation..... 

In the end, it looks like the contractor will have to move the brackets supporting the bottom end of the stairs, reframe the upper bracket so that the top end of the stairs can meet it, and move the three art glass windows below the stairs before the amazing sweeping staircase can rest in its final position.

All in all, the installation of the amazing sweeping staircase has proven to be a little anticlimactic.