You and your significant other are out shopping for a new home. Every home you view seems to have one thing in common: a bland, uninspiring central staircase that greets you as you walk in the front door. It suddenly dawns on you that you haven’t seen a truly inspiring staircase since you began your home search. What’s up with that?
What you are experiencing is a common problem with production staircases. Such staircases have not been designed with beauty and aesthetics in mind. They are purely functional. That’s fine inasmuch as the whole goal behind production building is to provide affordable houses that can be built relatively quickly. Yet at the same time, production staircases do not have to be bland and uninspiring. There is a lot you can do with them.
More About Production Building
Anyone who has built a home knows that the sky is the limit. If you have the money to spend, you can build just about anything you can dream up. However, experienced builders understand that average homeowners are not looking to spend millions on a custom-built home with tons of features and amenities. Your average homeowner is working with a fairly strict budget.
The whole goal of the production building is to build quality homes in line with customer budgets. Your typical production builder works up a small number of designs that will cover every house in a new development. Customers choose one particular design and then modify it from there.
Where production staircases are concerned, they rarely offer anything special. They are as simple and functional as possible so as not to weigh down the customer’s budget with unnecessary superfluity. In light of that, trim carpenters with a lot of experience in building staircases often refer to production designs as ‘cookie-cutter’ stairs.
Lots of Great Options
Production staircases are, by nature, fairly bland and uninspiring. But again, they do not have to be. The experienced contractors at Atlanta’s The Iron Spindle say there are lots of great options for sprucing up production stairs without spending a fortune. One of the more popular options among their customers is the iron spindle.
Also known as balusters, spindles are the support structures that hold up a handrail. Your typical production staircase is designed with oak or pine spindles. They are finished to match the handrail and newel posts. They are nice enough, but they do not look nearly as interesting as wrought iron.
Wrought iron spindles add depth. They add character. Pairing the right iron spindles with a complementary handrail can completely transform a production staircase from a bland and uninspiring architectural feature into the most inspiring part of the home.
Remove the Risers
The Iron Spindle offers another way to spruce up a production staircase without spending anything extra: remove the risers. Indeed, open riser staircases are pretty popular right now. They look quite modern and they allow more natural light and interesting site lines.
Removing the risers from a production staircase design requires absolutely no effort. Everything about the installation and finish is the same with the exception of fastening risers during construction. Just by eliminating this one element, you create an entirely different look and feel for the staircase.
It is hard to argue the fact that most production staircases are bland and uninspiring. It is not that builders are trying to create something ugly. Rather, they build production staircases to be functional without being budget-busting. The good news is that it’s pretty easy to improve the look of a production staircase without spending a fortune.
