Stairs

One of the very first things we had to do on our Victorian flip was have a structural engineer come out to help us with the stairs issue.

At some point, previous owners decided to "finish" the attic of the house. And obviously, you would then need stairs to get into the newly finished attic. So they built a staircase in the dining room. Which rendered the room essentially useless because of how much space was left.

So we were challenged with how to improve the space on the main level, but still have a staircase to access the upstairs master retreat. After playing with several different placements, we realized that a traditional staircase would not be feasible. We either lost the dining room or one of the bedrooms. Our only option was a spiral staircase.

I was not happy with the idea of a spiral staircase. My fear was that it would turn buyers off. Who would want to move their belongs up a spiral staircase? But the structural engineer was able to figure out how to get a 5' wide one in without losing hardly any space in the bedroom. And, came up with the idea of putting a staircase on the exterior of the house so that you can easily move your bed & furniture upstairs. Perfect!

Aerial view of what the spiral staircase will be like. The dashed lines to the left are the original staircase.

Profile view of the staircase

The plans made me feel very professional now. Not only do we have blueprints from a structural engineer but we had to have the plans signed off by the city as well. Cool, huh?