How many stairs in your house?

[Andy Burns]

7' 6"

But then I did only install some plasterboard a few months ago ...

[PeterC]

My last GF's house has 14: 6, half-landing, turn R, 1, turn R, 7. I almost always go up fast, 2 at a time, and, being used to 13 steps at home, used to have some dificulty when faced with the final 3 steps to take in one go, especially after having lost all impetus on the 2 bends. They are quite shallow, so with a matching rail on the 'other' side, she can still get up and down in spite of MS. Took quite a lot of careful cutting and profiling, using herself as the main measure, to get the rail right for her.

[Davey]

Well, I'm surprised how many people care!

[Jethro_uk]

OT (FSVO "OT") but did anyone see "Hidden Killer of the Victorian Home" ?

Quite apart from the eye-candy, it was fascinating to see how dangerous stairs were, and how varying height steps can cause a trip (and given how steep the stairs were, a trip at the top almost invariably led to a broken neck at the bottom :( )

[sm_jamieson]

Oh yes you are right, I just looked. There must be something funny about the way I half-conciously sometimes count them on the way down ... yes I wasn't counting the last drop onto the hall floor - 13 actual steps it is. Simon.

[News]

In message , Johny B Good writes

Why? Just interested. We're not talking about 1970s fashionable split level. This house is Victorian, with the ceilings in the back of the house being lower than those at the front, hence the split level.

[GMM]

Of course she is....but who could read this without checking? My last place (8' ceilings) had 13. I know because I used to count them at one stage with my son every night for about a year when he went to bed.

This place has 10' ceilings, so has 17 treads to the first floor (including the 180 turn) and 15 to the second.

So now I know too and so (re)qualify as weird ;-)

[Nick Odell]

I used to know the number of steps to the top of the old music school building (109) and the footpath up a bank to my son's old house (124) but until now I hadn't counted the steps in my own house. I have now:

12, 14 and 13. (The twelve are made of stone and steeper than the wooden staircases in the rest of the building and would be worth 13 anywhere else.)

Nick

[Johny B Good]

These were also victorian properties. The split level between the front and back seemed to be due to them being built on a slope rather than as a 'fashion statement'.

My own personal preference is to avoid such level changes on any "One Floor" so that the only steps to be found shall be restricted to stairways _between_ floors with only a single step exceptionally allowed elsewhere where it could be deemed an acceptable compromise or satisfy some other higher priority function.

In this case, it was more than just my own preferences guiding my choice, we also had to consider the XYL's aged and infirm parents' needs. Some of the split level properties we viewed would have been 'an accident waiting to happen' as far as the in laws were concerned.

[ARW]

Higher from what level? I can touch my kitchen ceiling with my fingertips at one end of the kitchen but not at the other end. The floor is out by about 4 inches.

[robgraham]

'Stairs' is the collective noun for a collection of steps so to ask how many stairs you have is stupidly easy - 1, that is unless you live in a mansion with several floors.

You wouldn't go to your front door and define the step there as a stair would you so it's just silly to refer to the steps in your staircase as 'stairs'. And that's not being pedantic - it's using the correct word for a building feature.

[Dave Liquorice]

We have two sets of stairs but only ground and 1st floors. There are also a number of level variations on both floors. It's "character".

The low doors (5') at some of these transitions are a bit of a hazard. Large bubble bubble wrap stapled to the frame is my friend. B-)

[Davey]

Ha! Both 'Bang head here' and 'bubble burst therapy' at the same time! Ingenious.

[meow2222]

I know one of them - does that make me partly weird? Seriously I don't get people that don't pay attention.

NT

[Vir Campestris]

You are assuming that both the floors and the ceilings are flat.

My ceilings vary between about 6'6" (just above head height for me - unlike the doorframes) up to about 7'6". And that's in the old part. The newer (Victorian) has about 8ft, as does the 20th Century bit.

And no, I don't know how many steps there are on the stairs. As the minimum headroom is about 5' I am usually thinking about that.

Andy