Yep, you read that title right. I made a staircase for my dogs and I’m going to show you what I did with it!
From the first time I saw the townhouse living room and that big window above the fireplace, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. In fact, I turned to Matt and said, “I have a crazy cat dog lady idea. If we lived here, I would build a staircase on the side of that fireplace so that the dogs could look out that big window.” My thought process was that the top of the fireplace is way too big to use effectively, and because of the big window, it’s not a good place to put a TV. I also knew that the goal in moving was to have the dogs on our bed less. At the Mt. House, we pushed the foot of our bed right up to the window, so the dogs spent a lot of time looking out throughout the day and night, which meant more time spent shedding on the bed. I was also aware that the dogs haven’t lived in a townhouse setting before with shared walls, so it would behoove us to find a way for the dogs to see out at least one window to ease their mind about sounds.
Fast forward and, surprise, we bought the place with the crazy dog lady idea! To be clear, we didn’t buy it for that purpose.
To start off this idea, or any idea, I like to look up inspiration images, so I searched far and wide for dog/pet stairs. Almost every single thing I found were plastic stairs to help old or small dogs up onto a bed. And the rest of what I found were awesome dog crates and dog areas that have been built in under stairs… *sigh* so, I guess I’m on my own for this one.
As you might remember, I asked my dad to build a rod for the closet using industrial pipe because I already had an idea of what I wanted to do for the stairs. My idea changed a little bit from start to execution, but the materials didn’t—industrial pipe and wood.
After a lot of sketching and math, I decided to make the steps about 8 inches deep with a 8 inch rise between each step. I could do that and use 6 total steps from the floor to the top of the fireplace. That’s pretty close to regular steps, so I knew the dogs would be able to get themselves up and down that without much problem (fingers crossed).
I started this project while a lot of our stuff was still being unpacked so I was so happy to take advantage of Home Depot’s free wood cuts—assuming you get them when they’re not super busy as you’re not asking for 50 cuts. I bought a board that was 8 inches wide and had them cut it into six pieces, each 12 inches wide.
Once I got those home, next up was staining. I wasn’t sure what color I wanted to used yet, but I knew I wanted to pick something out with Matt that we liked so I could default to that on any other woodworking projects for the townhouse in the future. I tested three samples colors and we decided on Golden Oak by MixWax, surprisingly enough—by looking at the color, it wasn’t something that I thought I would like the best, but after seeing a sample on the wood, it was warm and showcased the wood perfectly. So, I painted all the steps with three light coats.
Next up, was figuring out the pipes and how I wanted to construct them for this project. I knew I wanted more than one piece on the floor for stability as well as a piece connected to a wall for the same reason. I sketched out a couple ideas and finally came up with something that made sense. I’m really glad I took the time to do that, because in retrospect, my first idea would have been more expensive to put together and not necessarily more secure. So, with another trip to Home Depot, and some odd stares as I hung out in the industrial/plumbing pipe section for an oddly long amount of time, I left with everything I needed for the project.
Putting everything together was a pretty messy task. The pipe options included galvanized or plain, and I liked the look of the darker ones, so I picked those to do the project out of. Only problem is that the black coating gets all over your hands pretty easily. Knowing that from just picking them up and putting them in my shopping basket, I thought it would be smart to put some of our big boxes down in the living room, since that’s where I was planning on assembling this beast.
Once assembled, I attached the wood pieces in to the structure with screws. I set it up, and had Minion be my guinea pig to test out going up. So glad I did, because I immediately realized that the stairs needed to be attached to the wall in one more very important spot to prevent it from swiveling. With that fix, I decided to add a few more wall anchors because, why not? Then I added that white crate, leftover from our wedding, to hide the internet modem and router.
Side note: I love how obvious it is to see how two dogs “twin” each other all the time in the photos above.
In retrospect, I wish I had added some polyurethane to the steps before letting the dogs run all over them, but I think I’ll redo that somewhere down the line. And when I do, I’ll add something with some friction for easier footing. In the meantime, the dogs love the stairs! Seriously, the first day, I showed them how to get up and down with the persuasion of treats. I reinforced that for a few days, and was happy to see one day that Minion decided to go up there all by herself. And then she stayed up there. For the next 5 hours. I truly think she would live up there if possible. Slowly but surely, Zenko started enjoying being up there too.
Oh, I also added two of IKEA’s faux fur sheepskin rugs to the top and to make it a little more bed-like, as well as add some visual interest to the space. Gosh they’re the cutest, aren’t they? Love, Shauna