Thursday, August 20, 2009

Stairway design

(Brendan)

Molly and I decided on how we wanted the stairway to the second level to look quite a while ago after seeing a few images in some books that piqued our interest. We thought a nice clean look would be to have the "treads" (the steps) be the same dark wood finish and color as the wood floor on the first level, and have the risers (the vertical boards between the steps) be painted white. It seemed to fit with the design of the rest of the home and would create some unexpected visual interest for the stairs.

After reading "the farmhouse book" (which I refer to in this previous post), it turns out that the stairway design was another of our decisions that fits perfectly with the "modern farmhouse" aesthetic. Here's some images from the book:

So our stairway will be another little farmhouse design cue :-) By the way, that last image gave me some further inspiration when reading the book. I'd like to do the same thing with the bottom two stairs as is shown in that last image, i.e. have the stairs cascade outward (width-wise) along the wall. I don't know yet if we can incorporate that in our own stairway design (it depends where those last couple stairs land in relation to the wall) but if we can do it, I think it would be an nice touch that would be inexpensive to do. It's little details such as those that can make all the difference in a home feeling distinctive.

6 comments:

John Curran said...

I really like the last photo, also, with the cascading stairs. Assuming you won't have a mid-level room to enter from that landing, it would be a great place for a piece of stained glass, if its an outside wall, or perhaps a piece of art in a niche.

Rachel said...

Are you going to put the laundry room upstairs with the bedrooms? I think that's essential with a multi-floor home!

Brendan Koop said...

Yes, the laundry room is upstairs, that was definitely a requirement of Molly's :-)

Joseph Clarke said...

Another nice design touch! FYI - some laminate flooring vendors make one-piece stair treads (usually with nosing only on one edge), while others have a way to mate a piece of trim and a flooring board. Either option results in a stair tread without a lip to trip on, however, the later is definitely more time intensive to install, especially if the nosing is included on two sides. Of course yet another option is solid wood (or very thick veneer) stained to match.

Brendan Koop said...

Hi Joe. We're going with wood floor (engineered) so that makes installation a little more complicated but there are still pre-made stair nose pieces that give a finished nose on each tread. I'm looking forward to working on it!

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