Over the years I’ve owned this wee house I’ve tried a LOT of things. Ripped out walls, put kitchens in most corners, added stairs everywhere. Of course, ripping out and restoring lathe and plaster walls gets old quickly, so I did it on Google SketchUp. Very quickly in my efforts, it became clear that the big limitation in this house is stairs to the attic.

They have to…

Reach a little over 3 metres in height

Have enough headroom so they don’t stick out the top of the roof

Follow the rules on tread sizes, width, going and all the other fun stair dimensions

All this, without (ideally) losing any floor space from the main level. Tricky! There are, of course, several different ways of arranging stairs, and I tried quite a few.

Alternating tread stairs are super cool – I do love them. They save space by having two vertical treads in the space of one ‘normal’ staircase tread. It does mean they’re steep, and it also means you’re committed to going up on the same foot first every time. I don’t know which way I instinctively do it – it’s something I would need to work out if I was going to use this route!

Spirals are also obviously super cool. In theory, they also take up minimal space on the floor, only a small circle perhaps 5 or 6 feet in diameter. Of course, they have limitations, and I was never sure how easy getting, say, a mattress up or down one would be!

I tried putting them in the living room. I tried putting them where the bathroom is now. I took bites out of rooms, and tried to build utility cupboards under them. One obvious place to try was over the stairs to the ground floor – I have masses of volume and height there. The key thing was that they HAD to top out at the centre-line of the roof – it’s really the only place I have enough height. They have to be pretty central for the upper half, really, as one runs out of space very quickly at the outside walls.

I looked at plans drawn up by my neighbours for inspiration. They had normal stairs (perhaps wise) taking up a chunk of their living room. Could I live with that? It seemed sensible, but I didn’t want to lose living space. It’s a lovely room, but not huge. Hmmm.

So, those were my early thoughts…but where did I put them in the end? You’ll need to keep coming back to find out more 😉