The problem of stairs
So I had taken a little break from posting for a couple of reasons, one work and life got in the way and two, I really really didn't like my current plan with the stairs and as they are central to the house changing where the stairs were would change the whole floor plan. However, a brain wave took me and I realised I would have to redesign my whole floorplan in order to accommodate my new plan.
So what is the problem with stairs and my house. The first problem is there are a number of regulations you have to follow for stairs to be considered safe, this dictates the width of each step and the rise of each step to cover the distance. Which means the stairs have to have enough length to fit those requirements, which they currently don't so something has to change. I was going to put them along my central wall between the living room and kitchen, but I realised that you would have to walk from the entrance through the living space to enter the stairs which I didn't love as it felt disruptive. That course of action would also have meant to stairs opened on the opposite side to where I wanted my landing, not ideal.
So then I considered putting it in the same orientation against my external wall, this would have resulted in the landing upstairs being in the correct place, however I would have had to move some windows because of the length of the stairs. Given my house external walls are nearly a metre thick this would have been distinctly challenging. Also I had a similar problem of walking though my living space to access the bottom of my stairs, it was the best plan I had but I wasn't happy with it.
Then the brain wave struck, I had been planning to remove the wall the stairs are currently against to increase the size of my living room leaving the dinning room the same size. The stairs can't go against the wall to the dinning room because the door to the kitchen (another 1 metre wall so hard to move) would be in the way. If I plan to remove the other wall switching the current dinning room and living around but allowing for the stairs to be against the same wall as they currently are. Then if I turn the stairs by 180 degrees so as they start and finish at opposite ends as they currently do, I can extend the length of the staircase because I can move the location of the door to the new dinning room easily as it is just a panel wall. Additionally, flipping the staircase will make the flow of the house feel better because entering from the kitchen (the main entryway to the house) will bring you to the bottom of the stairs and allow you to go up it without disrupting the living space.
This plan will result in the stairs starting in the right direction for the flow of the house. The stairway will open upstairs where I would like the landing to be, and the fact it is built against a panel wall means I can move the doorway to increase the length of the staircase and bring it up to building standards. As I said a brain wave because it fulfills all of my requires and based on my current plans will work.
It has also given me a cool plan for the upstairs above my stairs, because of the low rise of my ceilings that will effectively be dead space sitting between my bathroom and my spare bedroom. I am planning on splitting this gap in half and putting shelves on either side inlayed into the created alcove. In the bathroom it will give me shelves for my vast collection of rubber ducks (a weird but nessassary requirement) and in my spare bedroom the shelves can have doors put on the front for storage, this side of the shelves are less well planned.
I therefore need to go back to the drawing board to replan out a lot of the parts of my house in order to accommodate for the change in the staircase. So be prepared for some more planning post in the imminent future.
Also the countdown has begun: Moving in 58 days
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