New stairs for cottage advice

Apodemus

Cute stairs!  It will be fun getting a bed up them when you move in!  

Niv

Apodemus said:

Cute stairs!  It will be fun getting a bed up them when you move in!  

I have learnt that flat pack everything for upstairs in our house for similar reasons!!

RAS

Apodemus said:

Cute stairs!  It will be fun getting a bed up them when you move in!  

That's what windows were for. The old trick was to remove the sashes and hoist furniture up through the opening. 

And yes, flat pack helps, but it's things like double mattresses that are most fun.

FreeBear

Newheight13 said: Someone did suggest to me that forget the stairs and get a lift instead! Not sure if this is a good idea or not!

Lifts are expensive and require regular maintenance. And when they go wrong (which they will do), you are stuck with an expensive white elephant until it is repaired. But as long as the stairs are still there, you at least have someway of getting up & down.

travis-powers

I’ve worked on a lot of old houses that have had quirky and in some cases dangerous staircases but couldn’t be replaced because they were historic, what you will find is that your family will become used to them very quickly!

ThisIsWeird

Cute indeed - it looks like a wee cottage in the Cotswolds a group of us stayed in decades ago.

Yes, awkward stairs, but you just accept them for what they are. By all means add some protection against falls such as mentioned before - carpet? A lower handrail? Stair gates, certainly, with toddlers (as with any stairs, of course). But many generations of families have used that house before you, and I bet not one had anything approaching a bad injury from these stairs. And if they did, they'd be much more careful the next time.

Personally, I would only add a second staircase as part of a properly-designed desirable extension that would benefit the house, and not just to avoid these stairs.

Mistral001

Do you know the original layout of the building?.  If it is a very old bulding, I suspect it used to be two separtate properties and there used to be two staircases. One at each gable.  If this is the case then perhaps working with the buildings original structure and reinstating the right hand staircase could mean that you do not have to build a two storey extension just for the extra staircase.