Dave Emery, Stumptown Stairs
Dave Emery builds every staircase that leaves the Stumptown Stairs shop, in wood, welded steel, or both, under Oregon CCB #218207 since 2016. This page is the plain version of that story: how an engineering student ended up welding stringers and cutting treads for a living, and why the shop still runs as one person's trade instead of a bigger operation with his name on the door.
From Engineering Student to Stair Builder
Dave started out studying engineering, training that turns out to matter more to a stair builder than it sounds: load paths, tolerances, and the math behind why a structure holds or doesn't. The stairs came later. Summers away from school were spent on job sites with his father at Door Works Company in Portland, and that's where the pull toward residential construction started, watching how a house comes together and noticing the difference between a staircase that's merely functional and one built with real care.
For a while, that interest sat in the background. What brought it forward again was smaller than a career change: a friend needed a new staircase built at their front porch, and Dave took on the project himself. Cutting stringers and setting treads for someone he knew reminded him what he'd liked about those summers in the first place. That porch staircase became the real start of what's now Stumptown Stairs, building stairs since 2016.
Wood and Welded Steel, Both In-House
Most stair companies are good at one trade and quietly sub out the other: a wood shop that farms out its metal railings, or a welder who hands the joinery to somebody else. Stumptown doesn't split the job. Dave designs, cuts, and finishes the wood himself, and welds the steel himself, in the same shop, on the same timeline. A staircase that pairs a wood tread with a cable or welded-steel railing isn't two contractors comparing notes after the fact. It's one person building both halves to fit each other from the start. See what that looks like on a full custom staircase design & build.
A Family-Run Stair Shop
Stumptown Stairs is Dave's shop: not a franchise, and not a larger operation dressed up as a small one. When you call, you're reaching the person who measures your stairwell and, later, builds what goes into it, not a dispatcher routing you to whoever's free that week. It's a deliberate trade-off. It caps how many projects the shop can take on in a year, and it's a real part of why the work looks the way it does.
Licensed, and Proof Over Promises
Stumptown Stairs has operated under CCB #218207 since 2016. Past the license number and the years in business, this page doesn't have a lot else to offer as proof: no awards to list, no press mentions to cite. What it can point to instead is the actual work. The project gallery shows finished staircases, not renderings, and customer reviews come from clients who paid for the work, unedited. Between the two, that's a more honest measure of a one-person shop than anything written on this page. Prefer to talk it through first? Start a conversation.
Questions About Dave & the Shop
Does Dave build my stairs himself?
Dave builds every staircase that comes out of this shop himself. There's no larger crew a project gets handed off to once the contract is signed.
What's CCB #218207?
CCB #218207 is Stumptown Stairs' license number with the Oregon Construction Contractors Board, the state agency that licenses and regulates construction contractors. Anyone can verify the license directly through the CCB's official lookup before hiring — enter 218207 and check status, bond, and insurance for yourself.
Do you do both wood and metal work, or do you subcontract one of them?
Both wood and welded steel work happen in-house, done by Dave, in the same shop. Nothing gets farmed out to a separate fabricator.
How long has Stumptown Stairs been in business?
Stumptown Stairs has been building stairs since 2016.