Our latest challenge: Modern Stairs

Okay. I know exactly what I need as far as stairs go: open flight stairs with metal stringers on the sides. Looks like this:

modern stairs

Shouldn’t be too hard right? Guess again! Finding someone to fabricate them has proven to be well… nearly impossible. I’ve contacted a dozen metal fabricators and none of them are willing to do residential metal stairs. (This is yet another draw back to not living close to any major city.) I’ve found some stairs with metal tube stringers that could possibly work. I’d paint them gray and do something similar to this.

modern stairs

(via) The only problem is that I’m not sure it would pass the ball test with our railing. (A 4″ ball cannot pass through any section of the stair in order to pass code.)  This is why I would prefer side stringers. The stairs I found were also a little overpriced in my opinion. Maybe I should just give up and frame in the stairs. Not as cool, but less of a hassle and much, much cheaper. (Always a plus!)

6 replies on “Our latest challenge: Modern Stairs”

  1. Oh – don’t give up and frame them in!!! We absolutely love our stairs and would be disappointed had we given up. You may look into a trade school at the nearby prison … or community college … or similar.

    Sorry – this is a follow-up of the other post from your other blog. The one problem we did run into with our design was keeping the stringers straight when they welded them together. All the welds are on one side, so when the metal heated and cooled, the underlying stringer also bent. They were able to fix them, but we now know some steps prior to welding that may have prevented the problem.

  2. You should as Ty and Erin how they did theirs. Their current staircase looks like your first example here. Although it might involve living close to Grandpa Young. I’m not sure.

  3. Shirley – I won’t!! It will definitely be a last resort. We’ll try to exhaust all of our options first. 🙂 By the way, did your husband design your stringers? I don’t know if you saw my response on my personal blog, but I was also wondering what type of railing you planned to use for your new stairs.

    Amy – That must be a fairly recent change (relatively anyway… everything feels recent when you visit just once a year!). Last time we were there the original stairs were painted a green color. I wouldn’t call a 6+ hour drive close. Poor Gary… he’s a good dad. 🙂

  4. Hi Beth – my husband started with the idea for our stringers and then worked with one of the teachers in the trade school in the prison to iron out the details. My husband then drew up the plans for them to put together. We are planning on having iron balusters of some type – a blending of rustic and modern styles. We have not completely decided and will likely wait until we have the final treads on before we do.

    Feel free to email me directly with any questions – my husband loves to share ideas, lessons learned, etc.I am planning on doing a more detailed look at the stairs in a blog post soon – or I could email you pictures directly too, if you want.

    Take care! Shirley

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