Staircase Restored

As regular readers will know ("oh yes, that's the blog that goes on and on about the staircase") John has been renovating our staircase.

This you may remember, was a Victorian staircase with spindles, until 1965 when my parents had the spindles boarded in - and a few of them removed - because firstly, it was fashionable; and secondly, it would stop my brother, who was then very young, from falling through the gaps.


The gaps are, indeed, rather wide - much wider than would be permitted nowadays. As a matter of fact, I had played on this staircase in a way that would now be considered highly dangerous, ever since we'd moved in to the house, which was when I was three. Many a doll had abseiled down perilously on a piece of string. Many a mountain rescue had saved a stranded teddy bear from death by starvation near the top. Many an imaginary upstairs conflagration was escaped by me sliding down the banisters at top speed.

And hey! I didn't fall through, or over, at any point, which is probably why I was rather cross that everyone seemed to think that my brother might. Why did they care if he fell through when they hadn't worried that I might?

Also, I loved the look of the old staircase, even then, and I hated the new boarding: but, of course, I was not consulted as I was only little. Grrr.

A few weeks ago John removed the boarding and started work on restoring the staircase. Then we went off to Florida and then the Communist died - - but this week we arranged a time for John to come back and finish it all, and he has.

This is what he did:

Cutting and fitting string patterns

Cutting and fitting tread flanges

Drilling and fitting ball tops

Fitting new spindles

Fitting newel post to top landing

Cutting and fitting corble for newel post

Cutting and fitting extended tread flange

Glueing ball tops

It's a whole new world to me! String patterns! Corble! Tread flanges! Anyway, it now looks great and the hall looks twice the size that it did before.

Next job is to fill in some ancient holes where it was boarded in and so on so it can be painted - yes, Stephen's going to get busy with the filler over his Christmas break, the lucky man.

Then we'll paint it white to match the rest of the hall and then - finally - we'll get a new carpet to replace the 1977 one.

Just as a reminder, here's how it all looked before John and I had a conversation which resulted in him poking a screwdriver through to see if any spindles remained:

One of the last conversations with the Communist that I had about the house was an update on how it was all coming along.

"I was wrong to do it," he said about the boarding, shaking his head ruefully.

Even then, him saying that made me want to cry, and I had to change the subject. Old Communists are not known for admitting they've ever been wrong about anything.