Replacing the Staircase from "H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks" with a Heavenly Staircase (Part 2)

Happy Friday world! Another week has flown by; are you guys ready for the weekend?  I sure am!  My weekend is going to be super busy and filled with running all sorts of errands for the house.  I have to pick out door knobs, cabinet pulls, stone for the fire place and light fixtures...but that means I get to go shopping, so needless to say, I am thrilled! Woohoo! Yesterday I brought you up to speed on the staircase remodel.  As I mentioned, here is what the death-trap, break-your-neck-and-your-shoes staircase looked like before the remodel began.

And here is what the new staircase looked like once it was relocated and elongated.

As I mentioned yesterday, after wading through all the options (glass, metal, wood, wire, none), I decided to use metal balusters with wooden newel posts.  I chose the metal balusters because I like the fact that they bring a bit of a rustic feel to our otherwise traditional living room (we have wainscoting all over the place, including the stairwell) and are somewhat masculine for my husband.  However, just because the stairs would be a bit rustic and masculine, I still wanted to infuse some glam and pretty for me.  So chose I chose a mixture of the large double-S balusters, double twist balusters and single twist balusters, and came up with this design:

Soooooo, after the wainscoting was complete and the balusters and newel posts were installed, we ended up with this as our finished product:

AND I L-O-V-E IT!!!! I am so excited with how our new staircase turned out! The wainscoting and large wooden newel posts satisfy my traditional side, while the metal balusters make the rustic-glam loving gal in me giddy like a school girl. I was busting out some hardcore Carlton, Roger Rabbit, Running Man and every other happy dance you can possibly imagine when I finally saw the finished product!  Progress and pretty...happy days oh happy days! Here is the view looking up the staircase towards the second story landing.

And here is what the staircase and banister look like from the second story. 

 

I love the fact that the double-S balusters are feminine and sexy.  I can't wait to see what everything looks like once it is painted...although we still have to figure out what colors everything will be.

 

So the progress keeps coming slowly, slowy, slowy.  Now onto the next projects, which are granite and tile installation. I will update you on that fun stuff next week! Wish me luck with my shopping extravaganza this weekend. And I hope that you have a wonderful weekend too!  Thanks for stopping by!!!

 

 

Replacing the Staircase from "H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks" with a Heavenly Staircase

Happy Wednesday everyone! We are half-way through the week and I hope that it has been a great one for you so far! Today we are going to check out the progress on the stair case.  Back in December, I told you that one of the big motivating factors for the remodel was to fix the killer staircase that lived in our house. Basically, the staircase was super steep because the stairs were extremely narrow (each step was only about 7 inches long) and extremely steep (each step was a different height). And, unfortunately, when you combined the fact that my closet was upstairs with my weakness for 5 inch heels and my propensity for being late...you ended up with this scene playing out in our house on a weekly basis:

 

And on a complete side note, although I am 5' 9.5" (can't forget that 1/2 inch), I belong to the school of thought that heels make your legs look pretty. To me, the taller the heel the better! This is a view of the death-trap stairs from our dining room before we started the remodel.

 

And here is a close-up of the steep little buggers pre-renovation. Not good I tell ya, not good at all!

 

 

To resolve the steepness factor, we moved the staircase against the front wall of the house, which allowed us to make the staircase much longer and install regulation stairs.  Here is our original floor plan that shows the location of the stairs before the renovation started (they are highlighted in yellow). 

 

And this is our new floor plan that show where the stairs have been relocated.

 



 

An added bonus of moving the stairs was that it completely opened the space between the entryway and the living room so that the living room became one large space instead of a decent sized living room and an awkward "foyer".  You can see really see the difference in the space in this picture of the new staircase that was taken from the dining room once the drywall was in.

 

Here is another view of the new staircase after the wood floors were installed.

A couple weeks ago the trim carpenters came out and installed the wooden treads and started on the wainscoting.

This is what the stairs looked like after the treads were installed. So pretty!

 

After the treads were installed, I got to pick out the balusters and newel posts.  This seems like a simple task, but there as so many different options to choose from, it can be a bit overwhelming.  First, you can have metal railings with glass walls like the staircase in Apple's Paris store:





Although I think this is super cool...this look is too modern for our house.  A second option is metal poles and wires. 

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Again, a bit too modern for the look that we are going for. Also, since we are planing on adding kiddos to the mix at some point, I am afraid that the wires would scare the living daylights out of me once the little ones became mobile.  A third option are wooden balusters and newel posts, like this beauty:

 



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I love everything about this picture.  The dark floors, the dark treads on the stairs, the wainscoting and the large craftsman newel post.  In my book, this is a stunning example of traditional architecture and design.  Although I love this look, another option is metal balusters, like this: 

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Again...this baby is 100% drool-worthy to me! What I really love about this look is that it combines traditional furniture, wainscoting and columns with a rustic (yet super glamorous) metal banister.  The only problem here is the price tag that this bad boy comes with.  I don't know for sure how much the banister costs, but I can pretty much assure you just by looking at it that it is well beyond our budget.  So that leaves us with the least expensive option around...











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Just saying "for-get-about-it!" to the newel post and balusters all together and opting for a floating staircase! How amazingly cool is that?!?!  But, going back to the child fear factor issue (and my own safety considering I have issues walking down stairs in 5" heels), these guys aren't going to cut it either.  So, Matt and I ultimately decided that we loved the mixture of traditional wainscoting with rustic metal balusters.  However, in order to keep the pretty factor that metal banister above has, I decided to start with this swirly beauty as my base:   





I then went online and found a website with a "design-your-own-staircase" application and created this layout for our staircase...which is a mixture of the double "S" balusters, single twist balusters and double twist balusters (because I thought that all "S" balusters would be too much and by spreading them apart, it makes the "S's" really pop).

I will report back tomorrow with the finished product! What about you guys, what type of staircase would you like in your home?  Thanks so much for stopping by and have a fantastic Thursday!
 

 

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Long Overdue!

I sincerely apologize for the extreme lack of posts over the past two months.  There has been lots going on that has kept me away: (1) crazy work projects, which amount to crazy work hours; (2) volunteering at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo; and (3) the biggest thing of all...Matt has been back in Aberdeen for the past 8 weeks for work.  So add that all together, and you have one overwhelmed and time crunched gal.  Also, right when we felt like we started to see a tiny light at the end of the renovation tunnel when the drywall went up, we took about 20 monster steps backwards in March and had zero progress throughout the house.  Everyone tells you that a renovation will not always go as planed and to "expect the unexpected". Well, with how smoothly everything went during the demo portion of our renovation (i.e., no hidden skeletons like knob-and-tube wiring or extreme water damage somewhere), I naively thought that we were out of the woods of potential disasters once the electrical, plumbing and HVAC were complete and the drywall was up.  Boy oh boy was I wrong! One thing that I have learned is that drywall actually helps to reveal any issues with a remodel because once walls are up, you can see where there errors are hiding.  For us, the mistake involved the structural beams that hold up the ENTIRE second story and roof of our house.  Yeah, I told you it was a BIG MAJOR HUGE ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE "OUR-HOUSE-COULD-FALL-DOWN" problem!  Basically, about a week after the drywall went up, I noticed a tennis ball-sized bulge popping out of the drywall on corner of the wall where the staircase meets the second story.  I don't have any pictures...so taking a cue from one of my all time favorite blogs Crappy Pictures, I have made my own illustrations (because blog posts are always more fun with pictures).  Here is the basic rundown of what happened:

After I saw that horrible red eyed monster the bulge, I promptly issued a "Houston, we have a problem!" call with the builder. However, when the builder showed up the next day, his reaction was:

Not satisfied since bulges don't typically pop-up on their own for no good reason, I decided to call the engineer over to see if he could explain what was causing the bulge. (and P.S. this is the same engineer who reviewed and stamped our plans as structurally sound, and inspected and  cleared the beams before the dry wall went up).  However, like the builder, the engineer's response was:

At this point I decided to call in the big boys....the dreaded West U inspectors.  I felt certain they would be able to explain what was wrong or, at an absolute minimum, recognize that there was a problem.  Like the engineer, the inspector had previously inspected the beams during the structural inspection and passed them before the dry wall went up.  Well (you might start noticing a pattern), his response was:

Needless to say, I was pretty distraught after being told by three different people that bulges in drywall are (apparently) no big deal. I was beginning to think that I might be crazy or at least too picky.  This is when having Matt on the same continent would have been helpful.  So I called the next best person, my "step dad" Rod, who is a contractor. "Why didn't you have Rod do you remodel?" you ask...well, two reasons.  First, we couldn't afford him (and didn't feel right having him discount his work just for us).  Second, we wanted to have someone that we weren't related to build the house in case there were any issues. That way, we wouldn't feel guilty calling them on it...somethings you just don't want to keep in the family.  Well, as soon as Rod got there, he put a level on the ceiling next to the bulge and immediately said:

We then had a group meeting with Rod, the engineer and the builder to investigate. Once the drywall was removed, we discovered that the framers installed all the structural beams in the house completely backwards! Basically, there were supposed to be two engineered beams that would hold up the weight of the house and then ceiling joist would be hung off of the engineered beams.  Well, one misread of the plans and we ended up with (1) one of the engineered beams being cut in half; and (2) all of the engineered beams (and the entire weight of the second story and roof) hanging off of two 2x10 ceiling joist. UGG!!!! Here's a picture to help explain:

And here is a close-up of the engineered beam that was split in half. 

I'm not going to lie...reliving this whole situation and looking at these pictures again makes me nauseous considering what could have happened if that evil little bulge had not decided to show itself until after the construction was finished or worse, before the house fell down.  So the take away from this post...follow your gut when remodeling or constructing a house.  If you think that something is not right, speak-up.  And keep asking until you are completely satisfied with the answer.  Had I listened to the builder, the engineer and the inspector (cause hey, why would anyone listen to those people...sheesh!), we could have had an absolute disaster on our hands!  We are now moving forward again and making progress, so I will have some happy progress photos tomorrow!

 

Take care and thanks for stopping by (if anyone is still stopping by that is...since I haven't posted in 3 months)!

 

Stairway To Heaven

One of the changes we are making to the house that is having the biggest impact is relocating the staircase. We are making this change for several reasons. First, as I previously mentioned, our old stairs were EXTREMELY steep. The picture below illustrates the rise and run on standard staircases.

As you can see from the picture, a typical Rise is 7 ¾" and a typical Run is 10 ½". Our stairs, however, had Rises varying between 8" and 9" and Runs varying between 7" and 8". That might not seem like that big of a difference, but the loss of 2" to 3" on the Run is HUGE because your feet don't fit on the stairs, which has caused a lot of Boy George moments for me, Matt and our guests (sing it with me…"I tumble for you, I tumble for you!"). The second reason for the change is the fact that we are closing off the pass-through on the back of the stairs because we are turning the old study into our master closet. The floor plan below shows the old stairs outlined in red and where we are closing off the pass-through for the new closet, which is highlighted in blue.

And here is a picture that shows a view of the old stairs from the dining room.

Closing off the pass-through on the back of the stairs, however, meant that we would have to remove the banister any time we wanted to move furniture upstairs because there would not be enough room to "PIVOT" any furniture around the 90 degree turn on the stairs. When you read "PIVOT" you have to imagine my all-time favorite Ross moment on Friends when Ross, Chandler and Rachel are trying to move Ross's sofa up the stairs…that, ladies and gentlemen, would be our exact problem here.

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So, after staring at the stairs for about two years to figure out how to resolve this issue, I finally had a Lightbulb! moment and decided to move the stairs out towards the front door. Here is my original sketch that I came up with back in May.

And here is my pitiful Photoshop'ed picture that shows how the stairs will work in real life.

I know I don't have mad drawing skills, but when an idea strikes, I have to get it on paper ASAP or I will forget it. However, as you can see in the picture and the floor plan, we have to move the front of the house out 5 feet in order have space between the front door and the stairs. But this was more than okay with me, because that meant that our dining room would also be 5 feet longer. Win-win I would say. The absolute best part of moving the stairs, though, is the fact that we now have room for a laundry room upstairs and are able to put a large built-in desk in the new landing to create an open study area. Here you can see the old floor plan with the stairs highlighted in red.

And here is my original sketch of the second floor with the stairs moved.

The final benefit of moving the stairs, was that it allows us to completely open the living room and remove the wall that used to divide the living room from the old foyer. The first picture shows the living room looking from the back yard before the stairs were moved, the second picture shows the living room looking from the backyard after the stairs were moved, and the third picture shows a close-up of the new stairs and where the old stairs used to be (and the wall in the middle of the picture is a temporary wall that will be removed once the second floor is properly supported).

This really opens the living room and makes the space feel so much larger. Here are pictures after the demo upstairs.

And the best part of all…my feet fit‼!

Ahhhh, the little things in life make such the difference! Thanks for stopping by. I hope you have a great day!