usually the steps erected are odd numbers

1,3,5,7,9 like this...

-The top most three steps are dedicated to various gods and goddessess...
in some areas some people place 'purna kumbham' on the top most of the step.
The next step 4,5,6 are dedicated to Gurus, saints,religious personalities and other highly
respected people in country and in the world
-seventh step is dedicated to various social activities and a festival
people depict generally marriages and important festivals in this step
-eighth step is for business crafts,and other economic activities...
-Ninth step is dedicated to dolls of men, women, children, animals, and birds...

ike to thank Love and Lentil for their tutorial from which I took the design with minor
additions.

Basic design of the Golu Padi

So, what do you need to get your basic 5 step Golu padi up and running (Well ! Not literally)
 2 side steps that will support your Golu padis
 The actual steps (5 of them)
 Vertical support for the side steps
 Horizontal support
The focus of this post would be to explain how to arrive at the measurement for the side
steps based on the width of each of the Golu padi. And in turn, arrive at your total amount
of wood that you need to purchase.

Key Decisions
First decide on the following : What should be the height between two steps ? What should
be the width (depth) of the steps ? What should be the length of the steps ? All these three
decisions will be completely based on your own collection of dolls / idols. For convenience,
choose the height and width (depth) to be same. In our case, we chose 8.5 inches as the
height and depth.

Choose the width, height and length of your steps

Dimensions for the side step support

Here is where Pythagoras Theorem comes in handy. Don't really remember using it for
anything functional in the last so many years. Your padi width / height (indicated by 'a')
being the sides of a square, you will need a plank that is 5 times the diagonal of that
square. The below illustration will help you decide how much of side step support plank
that you would need based on your choice of width and height.
 How to arrive at the dimension required for Side step support
For 8 inches wide step, you would need just one board of 4 feet x 7 feet plywood. This will
suffice for a 5 step golu padi. If you keep increasing the width dimension or increase the
number of padis, the total requirement would change. However, the same logic as
explained above can be used to calculate your total plank requirement. Again, the below
illustration is self explanatory :

Total (ply)wood requirement for an 8in x 8in step (4 feet long)

Horizontal and vertical support

The vertical support is required to hold the structure in place without falling down. And the
horizontal support is required to prevent the structure from falling sideways. Both these
supports are critical to the stability of your entire structure. You can either use the left over
wood (as indicated by the wooden texture in the above photo), or buy the required amount
 in addition to the 4ft x 7 ft board. The length of these supporting pieces are not provided
as they are straightforward and can be derived by merely measuring using an inch tape.

Vertical and side support for the overall structure

To summarize, we saw :
 What is the basic design of the steps
 How much wood is required depending on your choice of width dimension
 How the vertical and horizontal supports help holding the golu steps in place
I will shortly (In 2-3 days time) follow up this post with what I have used for making the
steps and the cost involved. Meanwhile, you will have to tell me if this DIY will be of any
use to you at all ? Would you be prompted to go ahead and try this out for this festive
season ? Let me know in the comments section.