Friday, April 29, 2011

Stunning Staircases

My boyfriend is in the process of buying a home, which makes me super excited because I finally get to put my design skills to use.  He found one he liked, but before he decided to put an offer on it, he made me go through and make a budget for everything that would need to be redone.  Item number one on this list?  The nasty banister.


Not only is it incredibly ugly...but it's incredibly broken...which means we HAVE to replace it.  Darn :)


Noel wants to replace it with some wood spindles circa 1990...so I decided to do a little investigating on other fabulous staircases before I caved and agreed to that.  So here are some of the most wonderful and unique staircases I found:



This staircase could have been perfect in the building I designed for studio this semester (an environmental tourism center where the lines between building and landscape are blurred).

I love the simplicity of this staircase...although unfortunately it could never actually be built like this, at least in the US, because it's missing a handrail.


I mean, what kid wouldn't want to actually slide down the stairs?  (Especially because I don't think that glass banister would make for optimal sliding)

On a realistic note, I know we won't be replacing the banister with anything super crazy like I posted above....so I suppose I should get a little more reasonable.



Staircases are often missed opportunities for storage.  Generally, people will wall off the space under the staircase and just throw all their junk underneath.  However, why not add in some shelves like you can see in the image above, or even better, turn the staircase itself into a series of drawers.  Now that is some serious storage.



When all is said and done, if he does decide to go with that house, we will probably end up with something more along the lines of the image above thanks to a little thing called resale value.  As much as I love the ultra modern designs, they cost a pretty penny and we'd hate to blow any margin of profit on one staircase spindle.  But until then, I can dream can't I?

1 comment:

  1. brushed steel with stainless steel wire guardrails--but you'd have to soften it somehow for a domestic application. but have fun and be creative--take advantage of the fact that code allows you some freedom in residential stairs!

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