Meet Our Stairs
I am realizing that I have never actually shown you our stairs in any level of detail… Well, they aren’t very pretty (yet), but I think it’s time you meet our stairs… Here we go! [Sidenote: There is a cancer update at the end of this post.]
The very first time we toured our house, I knew the stairs were going to be an issue. While we are blessed with the fact that they are 95% intact from 1852, they have nonetheless suffered from wear and tear, little to no maintenance, and an unfortunate amount of abuse. The steps themselves are fairly solid, but the handrail is very wonky and is definitely not very safe. It was a top concern of my mother’s both times she visited before her passing, and it is also a top concern of my mother-in-law’s who will be visiting in November when I can expect to be reminded that it is a concern (insert tongue in cheek here). As for us, we are both young and agile enough that neither of us need to use the handrail to ascend or descend the stairs, so we tend to forget about it.
While negotiating for our house back in January of 2017, we attempted to get the seller to come down on price by pointing out that the stairs needed a lot of work. Her response was “You’re buying an old house, what do you expect?” We got nothing… After moving in, we kept it on our list of things to get to, but it kept being shifted to “we’ll get to it”. Well, in spite of having a thousand things on our top priority list, we have decided we need to move it to the top of the list of “must get done.”
[Image: View looking up at the compound curve where our stairs change direction while continuing to rise upwards. Underneath all that paint is old growth yellow pine, and it is beautiful. Oh, and yes, that is a painting of Liz you see on the wall in the background. We’re gay, it’s our duty!]
[Image: These stairs located in a (fancier than ours)1850s house in Center City are similar to what our stairs would like like if we restored and stripped the banister and treads. Our stairs are actually more complicated than these. Source: Zillow]
[Image: These stairs in the book “Modern Practical Joinery” by George Ellis have many similarities to ours.]
[Image: Tangents, and complex math oh my… From the book “Modern Practical Joinery” by George Ellis]
Before I move on, I know you want to see some vintage staircase porn, so here are some recent shots. Most aren’t pretty, but it will be one day. Click through to a slide show.
Finally, last month, I hit the magic search phrase (which I have now mysteriously forgotten) and finally found some restoration specialists who are skilled in what we need. You would think with Philadelphia having one of the largest collections of historic buildings in the country, there would be more than a tiny handful of skilled woodworkers who can do the work. There are not… My only guess being that the vast majority of Pre-Civil War houses have been gut-renovated many times over and lost their original interiors. I know this to be the case in our neighborhood, where houses from 1810 have zero original interior detail, and owners have no clue that their houses are older than the city records listing them as 1920 indicate. We did manage of find a few qualified restorers, and we are waiting on quotes to determine our next steps.
[Image: View down from the top of the stairs. The handrail continues uninterrupted all the way to the newel post at the bottom.]
Once the restoration work is complete, we will need to strip the paint from top to bottom. Depending on how much it costs to have the stairs restored, we are hoping to hire that out as well. It would take me months to strip everything down, or a couple of weeks for a professional to do it. I will be sure to update as we get there.
[Image: Yours truly last week after getting a port embedded. under my skin to enable easier delivery of chemotherapy drugs and other IV medications.]
As most of my readers know, I was diagnosed with Esophageal Cancer a few weeks ago. My prognosis is very good as the cancer has not spread beyond the tumor in my esophagus. For the record, my diagnosis is T3N0M0. Better than my last post.
I begin daily radiation therapy today and will continue Monday-Friday for the next four to six weeks. I also begin weekly Chemotherapy on Wednesday for the same four to six weeks. Then we will see where I am at and take it from there.
Please know I have enormous gratitude to all of you who reached out to me either by leaving comments here, or via Facebook and Instagram, or directly. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You! As an introvert who spent most of my life hating myself (I no longer feel that way BTW), it is sometimes hard to grasp just how many amazing people out there care about me and wish me the best.
I am also extremely grateful for my husband (known here as Y) who is by my side every step of the way, doing everything I can’t right now.
And finally, I have written more than once over the past year and a half about my frustration with not getting projects started, or taking too long to get things done, or never finishing what I started. I had thought I was depressed… Turns out I am not. I have been fighting this cancerous tumor for a while which explains the fatigue and exhaustion so clearly now. I have stopped being mad at myself for not getting things done and instead I am choosing to be gentle with myself until I come out on the other side.
While I am going through treatment, I may not be able to work on the house, but I plan to keep writing posts. Expect my post on “What Style Is It?” with an explanation of just what style is our house, as well as master bathroom plans. I will be sure to add cancer updates with each post until I am declared fully recovered.
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Thanks for this update! I was wondering how you were doing on my commute this morning, and magically a post hit my inbox! The stairs will be a huge undertaking, but they are certainly worth it. I am also in awe of the workers 160 odd years ago who put it in. I have a hard time conceptualizing how to do a straight run staircase, let alone one with all these lovely curves. It’s OK if it takes time – and it will. . . hang in there. We are rooting for you!
Thank you Derek,
Day one of the radiation was fine, just feeling a bit tired afterwards.
The stairs will be a huge undertaking and will not be an inexpensive project to have done, but with all that is going on with my health, the timing is great. We can have them worked on while I recover, and having them done will set things up for getting a lot of projects going down the road (such as painting the hallway from the front door to the third floor).
Hooray for you fighting to keep the original stairs!!!
Love and hugs on the fight!!
Thank you Beth 😊😊
Thank you for the stair porn! Your handrail is amazing… the way the wood twists and winds and bends is absolutely fascinating — and proof positive that craftsmanship has gone WAY downhill since the 1850’s. It certainly is a feature worth saving, especially considering how relatively few have survived. The tight curves of the outside stringer must have required some serious steam-bending.
It boggles the mind to think how commonplace that kind of work was more than a century-and-a-half ago. It wasn’t even top-quality for the day but beats the crap out of any modern “luxury” staircase today! Definitely worth nurturing and preserving (though I worry about the restoration bid you will likely receive). I’m fascinated by the curious termination of the handrail at the top of the stairs; I’m surprised that the handrail was not bent downward to rest on the window sill (or that the window was not raised to allow the handrail to go under it). It makes me wonder if the entire staircase was not pre-fabricated and sold as a type of kit rather than being custom-built on site.
Keep on keeping on… looking forward to your posts on style and bath plans when your time allows for it!
😊😊
I came close to using the term Stair Porn in the post title, but then gave it a rethink. I can just imagine readers at work being called out by their IT department for looking at porn.
Our house being somewhat simple for the time, the staircase is by far the fanciest thing in our house. As I have scrapped away patches of paint to get to the wood, I can see evidence that it was simply stained and shellacked when it was new. Not quite sure if we are ready to go that far in the restoration (a lot will depend on how much of the paint can actually be removed), but it would be a sight to see it in it’s original glory. I marvel at the complex compound curves of the stringer as it winds its way upwards as well as the lines of the handrail.
The termination at the top of the stairs is a total mystery. What I do know is the baseboard at the floor under the window and the window casings are an exact match to the other original moldings throughout the house. The end of the handrail ends abruptly and is being held in place by a block of wood which is clearly not original. I also can see evidence that there was one more baluster in the space between the current final baluster and the window frame. Complete mystery. Also, the window is the same size and proportion as the window about eight feet away looking out from the adjacent rear bedroom.
As for how we intend to handle it, I would like to consider having the handrail dip down and then connect to the wall below the window, but it will all come down to budget. Very few people will ever really see the third floor landing.
Good Luck with treatments and your Fab house 🥰🙏❤️
Thank you Connie! We look forward to being ready for friends and family to visit and stay with us. Wink, wink 😉😉
Thanks for the stairs update! That’s going to be a huge project but i’m sure it’ll look amazing. Stairs are such a central piece in a house! I’m also super amazed at the technical skills to calculate and then make these winding stairs. And your post made me think of this reno blog of a Georgian house in Ireland, where the guy had his under stairs 3 coat plaster redone, wood and handrail restored. https://georgianrenovation.blogspot.com
Such a coincidence Miss-Apple37! 😊😊
I have followed @georgianrenovation on instagram for this past year drooling over his staircase and pretty much everything with his house really. The. coincidence is that I only discovered his blog this past weekend and spent hours on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, binging on all of his posts.
His house is about 30 years older than ours, but there are a lot of parallels, even down to the basic layout. We are hoping to restore our banister back to wood as well as our treads.
awesome!! I wish your stairs the same recovery as his 😉
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