HOME DESIGN : Ups, Downs of Stairways
Patty Mickey is not one to take no for an answer.
Her Costa Mesa PMA Design Group had created an unusual stair rail design for Lee West’s elegantly appointed condominium on the Lido Peninsula. Several carpenters said it couldn’t be done, but interior designer Mickey persisted.
What was it about the design that made carpenters reluctant to try?
The wooden handrail had unusual curves and no corner support post at the top where the rail was to curve up as if doubling back on itself. Instead, the handrail’s curving shape would provide the support.
Double beveled glass panels that had to be individually measured and cut were to be used instead of balusters. Mini-lights were to be installed at the bottom of the panels and a bridge repeating these materials was to connect the upstairs landing with the master bedroom.
Then Mickey found master cabinetmaker Tres Converse of Laguna Beach. Even Converse was reluctant at first, but rather than being stumped, he welcomed the project as a challenge.
To create the handrail, he had to do forms and layouts for the exact curvature and then create it on site by heating, bending, clamping and laminating together thin strips of white oak. The result “really comes off like a piece of sculpture,” Mickey says.
Why go to all this trouble for a stairway?
“It’s incredible what a strong statement a stairway and its design make in a home,” says Veronica Lorman, a Newport Beach interior designer.
“It’s a really powerful piece of architecture and really sets the tone or helps to set the tone for the interior design,” she says.
“It really is important that (a stairway) blend with everything else that you’re doing in terms of finishes and details with the windows and the moldings and baseboards,” she adds.
Several things need to be considered when designing a staircase, according to Andrea Holte Hymer of Hymer Design Group in Orange.
Important considerations are: the shape of the staircase, whether it is to be simple or intricate in design, selection of materials, traffic patterns, whether a staircase should be solid or made so that it is open and provides a view of the rooms beyond and whether it should be dramatic or blend passively into the background.
Materials selection, Hymer says, is based on a house’s interior and exterior style. Materials can be weed, brick, glass, plaster or drywall and metals such as wrought iron or aluminum dipped or painted with faux finishes.
Hymer worked with homeowner Nadine Tardie to create a charming stairway for her custom Victorian in Orange. Though Tardie jokingly refers to the stairway as “a plain Jane,” it really sets the tone for her home because it’s the first thing you see when you come in the door. Tardie decided on the style of the stairway after looking at a parts catalogue for stairs.
The handrail and the treds are oak. A wool carpet with a burgundy background and a ribbon and flower motif in mauves and gray blues runs up the center of the steps. The delicate-looking turned balusters are painted white and an adjoining wall is painted a rose color.
The stairs run straight up to a landing and then make a 180-degree turn up to the second floor, where a matching railing runs parallel to the stairs. Tardie says the treds, railing and carpet totaled about $6,000.
Stairways are such an important design element, according to Lorman, that remodeling an existing stairway can give an older home a whole new look. She recently completed a project in a 1960s-era condominium in Corona del Mar that she says was quite unattractive when she started.
The existing stairway had treds that were painted dark brown and had a carpet runner. There was a metal structure to hold the handrail, which was a rectangular piece of wood painted brown. And there was an odd open space under the stairs that served no purpose.
Lorman set out to change this dated look. She had the odd space enclosed for storage and had a carpenter create a simple new rail system using molding pieces instead of stock handrail parts. “Once you find the molding, you can put it together to create this shape as opposed to having to mill something that would have the kind of detail that’s in this,” she says.
This neoclassical design features a whitewashed oak handrail atop a series of groupings of three square posts followed by a small separation before repeating the grouping. The posts are painted white and the handrail matches flooring in the entry. The stairs are now covered with a soft gray carpet. “It just turned out so well,” says Lorman. “It made the biggest difference in this space, I cannot tell you.”
Some homeowners who want to remodel stairways are tackling the job themselves, according to Todd Skinner, general manager of the Hardwood Center in Santa Ana, which sells oak and paint-grade stair parts and other finish materials such as moldings and doors.
“There’s this growing trend toward people doing it themselves,” Skinner says. “In fact, we give classes two or three times a year on installing a stairway.” He says he gets at least one customer a day who plans a do-it-yourself stair remodel.
Most people, he says, just want to change a handrail to give a home an updated look. Skinner says there’s sometimes “sticker shock” when he tells them that materials for basic handrails and posts or balusters average $60 a linear foot. That means $60 times two for each linear foot, because there are two sides to most stairways.
He says hiring someone to do installation will at least double that cost and that’s why a lot of people decide to try it themselves.
How hard is it?
“It’s really not that difficult,” Skinner says. “We tell people it’s just something you can’t rush into and expect to get it done because it’s a structural project. . . . It’s not something you can just screw together and put down real quick.” And, he admonishes, do-it-yourself stair remodelers should have “a basic knowledge of woodworking” and need to check on city building codes regarding stairways.
Handrails, for instance, usually are required to be around two inches wide so that they are easy to hold on to and balusters usually must be “six-inch on center,” which means that there is no space between them where a six-inch sphere can fit through.
Some homeowners who are opting for stairway remodels are not interested in do-it-yourself. Rod Bradfield of Bradfield Manufacturing, Inc. in Santa Ana says that between 10% and 15% of his work is remodeling old stairways and 80% of his business is residential. Bradfield’s company manufactures and installs metal handrails and circular metal stairways with all steel construction.
Accessories available for metal stairs include bronze, marble or wood pieces that can be laminated to handrails or treds. The price range for these welded creations is “somewhere between $2,000 and a hundred grand,” according to Bradfield.
An example of a $2,000 stair would be a spiral stair that is five feet in diameter and might be used outside from a second-story deck to a patio deck. A $100,000 stair might be 12 to 14 feet tall, with glass panels and solid stainless-steel handrails, all polished to a chrome sheen and marble treds, according to Bradfield.
Remodeling a stairway may include changing a handrail or even removing wood or metal stairs and installing a whole new metal stairway.
“Curved stairs can buy you a lot of space if they are done right,” he says. “You gain more space a lot of times if you take out a straight stair and put in a curved one.” He says the extra space can then be used to enlarge an entryway, bedroom or bathroom.
All rails and stairways are done on a custom basis, he says, because the measurements in each house are different. Parts may be forged or cast and then welded together.
And metal stairs are not just for contemporary homes, according to Bradfield. He says texturing and casting items can create even English or French provincial stylings on the metal.
Randy Sims is a partner with his brother Bob Sims in American Ironcraft in Orange, which manufactures and installs spiral metal stairs and handrails. He says he also does a fair amount of remodeling.
Sims says sometimes he needs to remove an old stair railing and add some design features to it “and reinstall it or, in some cases, we’ve taken out their existing rails and started from scratch and built new ones.”
The cost of removing stair rails and replacing them with a new metal ones ranges from $15 a linear foot, for each side of the stair rail, to $400 a linear foot and more, according to Sims.
Existing metal rails can be enhanced by adding detail such as forged S scrolls or by welding on pre-made designs of aluminum on to the old rails. Sometimes, he says, this can be done without even removing the existing rails.
Metal stair rails and stairs are usually painted a color to match the interior or another contrasting color. Bradfield says: “Painting iron black is a thing of the past, hopefully. It sure made a lot of it ugly when it could have been nice. Black paint also covers up a lot of sore spots. Lousy craftsmanship is easily hid with black paint.”
Craftsmanship and careful planning do seem to be the key to a successfully executed stairway.
Patty Mickey says the original plan for West’s stairway called for a basic wood turned-post stair rail. “We thought it was too traditional and a little too ordinary” for this home, she says.
As a result, West got a stairway that dramatically sets the tone for a house with such appointments as a refrigerated wine cellar tucked beneath the stairway and a powder room with walls and ceiling hand-painted in a richly textured faux ostrich skin finish.
“It’s basically what I was looking for,” West says of the stairway. “I wanted something unique and totally different. I love the fact that the lights are in it. . . . The lights light up the beveled glass and it’s just gorgeous at night.”
