Marble Stair Case

Considering a two story property but worried about my 5 year old. Ran into this house with a lot of pluses but a few minuses. One minus is that it is a two story with ALL marble downstairs and all Brazilian cherry upstairs. Sleeping quarters are upstairs. There is a marble stair case (not spiral stair case) that leads to the top, really concerned about the safety (thinking of stepping out from the pool feet still wet stepping onto this stair case or stepping out from the shower upstairs and hear the door bell rang...) slipping on this marble stair is no fun. Also the steps are all slabs without any 'vertical' parts so small children cal slip into the space between two steps and fall. It has a very minimalistic look but it really concerns us safety wise. Also this stair takes up a large part of the foot print.

Is a spiral stair case safer or no? Is there anything that can be done to make it safer (short of an elevator!)?

Thanks,

Spirals are a pain in the ass and in my view, unsafe.

You can try to etch or grind the marble. Maybe you can find an extra piece in the garage or in a hidden spot you can experiment with.

I never had any actual problems, but BOY did those things scare the bejeezus out of me when I was little.

I suspect (I am not an expert and do not play one on TV) not. Stairs are easy to take because of uniformity. On a spiral stair, a few inches to one side or the other and you aren't walking on the same riser/tread that you are used to and mistakes can be made.

The worst part about a spiral is that your left foot doesn't descend down the stairs as fast as your right foot because the treads are closer on the right side. Thus its real easy to fall down the damn thing. Knowing the codes as I do I am surprised they haven't outlawed spirals.

'JD'

-So are cars- seriously so. Maybe we should 'code' them out of existence. Cliff-diving into deep, clean Canadian cottage-country lakes without a certified lifeguard for miles, and hiking around them up and over rocks and cliffs like we used to do as kids is unsafe, too. And what fun.

To me, many spiral stairways lend an appeal, beauty, soul, excitement or spirit to a place- perhaps in part by their apparent component of 'danger', 'awkwardness' or 'inconvenience' as well as the fractal or living 'DNA thing' about them- and as long as they remain in the code, if against the wishes of some who feel frightened, tender, awkward or cautious of/on them and/or get hurt on them, I'll be okay with that.

Thinking about it some more; in some sense, by default or definition, architecture('s appeal) seems partly about (through) risk, danger and/or inconvenience. Maybe that ostensible aspect of architecture and its context could be discussed here.

Just picking a nit. Nothing fractal about a spiral staircase.

But we have to protect their feelings. If they are threatened by the staircase then we are at fault. Outlaw spiral staircases and people will be protected from feeling bad. You don't want people to feel bad, do you?

I know I get frustrated by... how crappy a lot of safety and accomodation solutions look. Of course, the studly designers in the world work within the known constraints to design good solutions. Nobody will ever make a detailed etching with a 2' thick crayon but still good work can be done with the crayon.

What I need to do is improve the economy so everybody gets way rich and then I can hide all the stupid crap behind excessive baroque frou frou. Yeah. Vierzehnfrickinheiligen, all right.

'gruhn' . Well I did put 'apparent' and 'or' in there. '...by their apparent component of 'danger', 'awkwardness' or 'inconvenience' as well as the fractal or living 'DNA thing' about them'. But, to be SAFE, maybe I could have put quotes around 'fractal', or even 'living'. (ie. Is DNA still spiral when it's dead- assuming it dies?) Even some parentheses and brackets. Some fractal images do show lovely spiraling forms, though, and perhaps one could craft a fractal spiral staircase design- even automate components of its design in a CAD prog. .

It's either them or me! LOL I just heard on TV that 1/3 of people suffer from some forms depression, and I doubt it's because of natural things & surroundings & leisure. To begin, I think we need more spiral staircases and, in some ways, less environmental sterilization and efficiency/safety-optimization.

And Feel.

Hear-hear!

Is 'rich' a relative thing? Anyway... Zen and/or 'minimalist' interiors are ok if done 'well', but sometimes you need a little danger, a little baroque frou-frou maybe sure. But give me it as part of the structure! If I find out it's merely window-dressing, I'm going to lose my chi!

By itself, it's not alive, IMO. A virus is ALMOST alive.

DNA is never a spiral. And most spiral stairs aren't either. But the root of the question is, put a bunch of atoms together like this and what shape are they? What causes changes in that shape? IIUC pretty much the only thing to change the shape of a given molecule is temperature. Something long like DNA can flop around (unlike, say, an H2O) so we get into different 'levels' of shape and ...

Always good to have. Though I tried putting some shelves up with parens... mistake.

<raging scot>Yew selfish bastard!</rs>

Rainy days and Mondays always get me down. So do elevators.

(Light switches, on the other hand, they turn me on.)

You ain't met my relatives.

I'm sure there's a large bunch of economic theory about how many people can be rich and how much wealth there can be. I know nothing of this can only point out that once upon a time it was probably thought that with the aristrcracy running at... say 1:1000 people (totally guessing) and everybody else being a dirt farmer that that was pretty much the natural limits of number of wealthy people. Then somebody started inventing the merchant class and... So anyway, my answer - maybe not.

If you're being Zen, it's ki.

Yeah, the old decoration argument. I'll either win and be a raging successful stud with awards out the wazoo, or I'll go insane. Curious to see how that unfolds.

'gruhn'

Agreed.

You are making me nostalgic for my old science class days. Is light still both a particle and a wave, or did I get that wrong?



My surname means 'son of the carpenter'... so *sigh* I guess it's <raging scot>Arrr! Ya watch that tongue of your-r-rs, lahddie!</rs>

...Ooo...oh... muh poor-r tender-r-r thr-r-oat... Aye, pass me a wee bit o' th' dr-r-ram, ther-r-e, will, yeu, lad?

Arr!.. Ah think ah'll need a wee bit mor-re D-r-r-am...

Oh? But could they co-exist, maybe like a Japanese interior with Shaker furnishings in a post-modernist residence?

Should be a hoot. You might even manage to turn out both insane And successful, (if only after death).