Has anyone done any kind of quirky renovation in their house that sounded good in their head but they found later was a terrible idea?
We have a secondary staircase in our family/playroom -- a spiral staircase. Owners put it in 20 years ago. We have a 1 year old and another on the way, so it's basically off-limits to everyone but me and the cat for the next 6-7 years (and even the cat has hurt himself on it).
We looked into replacing it with a normal staircase, but it's going to require expensive renovation that not only takes space from the playroom as well as the room above it (large bedroom), but the exit for the upstairs would effectively be in a back bathroom, requiring renovation/repurposing of that and an adjacent room as well. While that upstairs bathroom and laundry room are not major/nice pieces of the home, a renovation is still a renovation.
Just removing it and patching the floor not really a good option - it's a long house so it's a pretty good hike from certain rooms to others with just one staircase.
So we started toying with a few ideas on how to keep it blocked off from the kids, but not just a useless area. We had always talked about wanting a climbing wall in the playroom for the kids... and came up with an off the wall idea of possibly doing a cylindrical hidden staircase envelope (with spiral inside) that that doubles as a climbing wall on the outside (and in the future can be converted to just shelves or removed entirely when we deem the spiral safe for all).
I know something like this wouldn't be cheap, but does this fall under the category of "ridiculously bad idea you haven't thought through at all" or "would be a super cool showpiece and thing for the kids to have in the playroom, if you can afford it - do it!"?
We have a secondary staircase in our family/playroom -- a spiral staircase. Owners put it in 20 years ago. We have a 1 year old and another on the way, so it's basically off-limits to everyone but me and the cat for the next 6-7 years (and even the cat has hurt himself on it).
We looked into replacing it with a normal staircase, but it's going to require expensive renovation that not only takes space from the playroom as well as the room above it (large bedroom), but the exit for the upstairs would effectively be in a back bathroom, requiring renovation/repurposing of that and an adjacent room as well. While that upstairs bathroom and laundry room are not major/nice pieces of the home, a renovation is still a renovation.
Just removing it and patching the floor not really a good option - it's a long house so it's a pretty good hike from certain rooms to others with just one staircase.
So we started toying with a few ideas on how to keep it blocked off from the kids, but not just a useless area. We had always talked about wanting a climbing wall in the playroom for the kids... and came up with an off the wall idea of possibly doing a cylindrical hidden staircase envelope (with spiral inside) that that doubles as a climbing wall on the outside (and in the future can be converted to just shelves or removed entirely when we deem the spiral safe for all).
I know something like this wouldn't be cheap, but does this fall under the category of "ridiculously bad idea you haven't thought through at all" or "would be a super cool showpiece and thing for the kids to have in the playroom, if you can afford it - do it!"?
