Converting old staircase

Peter_Ward · 9 February 2019 at 4:02PM

I was wondering if someone could give me advice and approx. total costs for converting an old fashioned plasterboards staircase to spindles (going up and on landing). Big rectangle plasterboard on landing. People have suggested that square spindles would be easier as the small parts to downstairs ceiling is not easy? Would prefer something more fancier though!
Approx total cost for this would be much appreciated and how long this would roughly take?

Tom99 · 9 February 2019 at 5:14PM

Are you sure the 'plasterboard' is not hiding the original spindles?

Peter_Ward · 9 February 2019 at 5:27PM

Not sure, bought house 5 years ago and it was like this. I am very naive at this, so spindles are always behind the plasterboard?
thanks

unrecordings · 9 February 2019 at 5:34PM

Peter_Ward wrote: »

Not sure, bought house 5 years ago and it was like this. I am very naive at this, so spindles are always behind the plasterboard?
thanks

When the craze for doing this sort of thing was prevalent, the easiest possible way of doing it was just cut the board to shape (usually hardboard rather than plasterboard) and tack/ail it in place over the spindles. If you remove the board carefully I think there's an evens chance you'll find them all perfectly preserved

unrecordings · 9 February 2019 at 5:44PM

Also depends on how old the house is. Spindles are used to keep the handrail solid. Anything before say 1950 I'd guess would have had spindles. 1960's/70's/80's might have been designed to be a solid bannister, in which case anything under the board might be purely for structural support and therefore pretty ugly. If it's a 1920's/1930's house you might be lucky and have a real beauty of a bannister to uncover

Tom99 · 9 February 2019 at 5:48PM

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Measure the thickness between the two surfaces, if its 30mm/50mm there will be something in the middle. Typical 1960's modernisation was to panel over the spindles with thin plywood. Same with paneled doors.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Tap along the length, does it sound hollow, solid, hollow, solid at say 100mm intervals.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Then drill or cut a hole in the hollow part and have a look.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]You may find that once you have cut a hole you can just pull the plywood off as its usually only tacked on then painted over. [/FONT]

Owain_Moneysaver · 9 February 2019 at 5:52PM

If the house is old enough to have spindles (pre-1945) they're probably still there.

If it's a newer house, it might not have been built with spindles.

Examples of staircase bannister kits here and here

Note there are strict rules about bannister spacing so children can't trap their heads or fall through. Explained here

-taff · 9 February 2019 at 7:07PM

I removed the hardboard from our stairs [1930's semi] and the original spindles were in there. Just bog standard ones though, but the difference in light downstairs was immediate. took a while to pull all the nails out after though and fill the holes with woodfiller...