Since the new internal stairs are finally almost ready for us to use we have removed our old rear external staircase.

The old rear staircase actually consisted of half of the old (per-house lift) front stairs welded to the original rear stairs. The railing was a single 2 x 4 attached to the house at the top and two posts screwed to the sides of the stairs. They were put on as a temporary staircase two and a half years ago, and I guess have held up pretty well.

With the rear external staircase finally removed I can now look at building a patio and erecting a patio cover. The old staircase sat right in the middle of where those things should fit in.

The stairs are finished and we are able to start painting.

They have turned our really well. The dark Kwila timber stair treads actually manage to flow quite well with the pine floorboards up the top. I was actually quite surprised that they turned out almost the same colour as the Western Red Cedar louvers above the stairwell, and the timber shelf separating the kitchen from the new stairwell (you can see it in the top right of the photo).

We are considering paying someone to paint the stairwell for us. Our builder recommended someone to us and they were out today to have a look at it. We should get the quote from them tomorrow and we will see what the damage could be. As soon as the stairwell is painted then we can make the move downstairs.

We are very eager to finally be living down there, we are only about 2-years behind schedule …

On the third day of our stairway construction the landing was put on in the middle of the staircase and the plasterer started on the plastering.

Because the area that we are putting the staircase isn’t very big I was tempted to put in winders instead of a landing. The landing takes up about the same amount of space as 6 treads on a 180 degree turn like what we have (3 tread on a 90 degree turn), so it would have save us a lot of space for our staircase. There are disadvantages to winders in your staircase though, including:

• Increased cost
• Much more complicated design
• One end of the winder is very narrow and it is easy to slip on (not good for kids)

For us the decision mostly came down to cost. There would not have been too much advantage in using a winder, so we went with the more basic design of a hardwood landing. The space was pretty much perfect for the standard design anyway.

The treads were installed on the fourth day. It’s exciting to see it coming together finally. The plasterer was also here sanding and plastering the walls more.

They still need to put on the trim and handrail, and finish off the polishing of the landing. Unfortunately the plastered didn’t use any drop sheets on the landing, so the builders are not too happy about that, and they need to re-sand and polish the landing. That’ll slow them down a bit more, which they weren’t counting on.

If you are looking at increasing the living area of your house you are probably looking at one of two options:

• Build a house extension
• Add another story to your house

Which option you choose can depend on:

• City council zoning laws
• Appearance of the House from the Street
• Costs

This web-site has documented a lot of our experiences adding another story to our home. We did this by lifting our house and then enclosing under it. It sounded at the time like the easy option, but as we’ve discovered, there is no such thing as an easy major renovation.

Over at Renovate Queenslander they have started to write about their experiences adding a major extension to their Queenslander in Brisbane, Australia.

Fabie and Warrick have decided to build a large extension onto the back of their Queenslander. They new extension will include a new main bedroom with ensuite, a new kitchen and new large deck and entertaining area. You can read about their extension plans here and and view their plans here.

Building an extension has some advantages over lifting and enclosing under your Queenslander. Here are just a few:

• Doesn’t change the current proportions of the front of your house
• You can build most of the extension with minimum disruption to the rest of the house
• Only minimum work needs to be done on the existing house structure

What other advantages and / or disadvantages do you see with building an extension as apposed to adding a new story to the house?