Anyone here have two staircases? ie both ground to first floor to separate parts of the house

[JamieOliveOil]

Hi I'm looking at an old farmhouse dating back to 1500's. It could be perfect - four good sized bedrooms, plenty of room downstairs and most important; scope to improve and add value. However, it has two staircases - one reaches three of the bedrooms and the other to the last bedroom.

This doesn't cause us too many concerns as our teenage DS will sleep there and the little ones near us.

Just wondered if anyone has lived or lives in a house with a similar set up and how this has worked for you. Has it proved an issue when selling?

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, we've got three!
I like it, provides marvellous hide n seek possibilities!

Should add, one goes to the whole upstairs, one is the old backstairs and one goes to the annexe and hay loft!

I think it would be attractive to families in similar situations to you, or with maybe another adult (like their own parent, a lodger etc) or, indeed as a guest room. In fact, I love the sound of the set up. No experience of it though

We are planning to do something similar in fact and going to use the one up the "odd" staricase for a spare room.
Good luck (can't see why it would be a prob, I think the more staircases the better )

Wow! thanks for the quick replies. That's reassured those niggling doubts!

IMO it would not be a negative unless it meant that the fourth bedroom is a long way from a bathroom/loo (eg if you have to go down one staircase and up the other to go to the loo in the middle of the night).

Otherwise, having a bit of extra privacy for one bedroom is probably a good thing.

Have always wanted to live in a house with two staircases. However, they would have to be un-carpeted else I'd spend my whole life hoovering the stairs (no, I don't have a fixation with cleaning the stairs, honestly I don't).

In a week and a half we are going to be moving to a house with this same set up and although it didn't put us off buying the house, it's one of the first things that we will be addressing. The master bedroom (the only one with an en-suite) is the one accessed via the second staircase and as our youngest is only 6 still we wouldn't feel comfortable not being to easily accessible to her at night.

We're going to start off in one of the other three bedrooms and have work done to join the two parts of the house together as soon as possible.

It probably wouldn't worry me so much if I weren't so used to having an en-suite bathroom (and if my poor middle-aged, two children battered bladder didn't mean that I have to get up to pee every night...).

servants' quarters, huh?

When DH and I were looking at older rural houses, we found an awful lot of the ones on the market (most?) had two staircases, and it did seem to be something that put buyers off. It certainly put us off. However, these were usually a slightly different set up, in that you had 2 rooms and a bathroom up one staircase, and 2 rooms up another staircase at the far end of the house. We felt that for a family with 2 younger DCs, it wasn't a suitable set-up as you couldn't hear any problems in the night. It is also extremely inconvenient in the middle of the night if you have to get up, go downstairs, go through several rooms in the middle of the house and up another staircase to go to the loo.

You seem to have a better potential set up, as if only one room is on its own, as then that can be a guest room, or for a lodger, etc. On the other hand, as people said, if the bedroom doesn't have a bathroom near by, that's not going to be very appealing.

One of the things we thought was a major advantage in our house is that all the rooms are now up one staircase (after an alteration in the 1960s).

Is the house listed? If so, don't forget that you may not be able to do some of the things you're initially thinking.

Whether or not its listed, a house that age does come with a whole host of extra problems when making alterations that you won't be expecting, that will restrict your choice of builders / specialist tradespeople, and that will add substantially to the price. For example, we're currently trying to put in another bathroom. We have Listed Building Consent, but there is far less space between ceilings and floors than in a modern house, which means that we have to do the plumbing very differently and far more expensively...

Rented a house with 2 bedrooms up one stair and 1 and a showroom up the other. Was an old farmhouse and cottage made into one. Was great when we had guests and amazing when DD was a baby and I wanted sleep, as I could leave DH with milk and go and sleep uninterupted in the other bit ( with a 3 foot stone wall to block out DD's crying! ).
Kids visiting loved it for hide and seek.
Bedrooms were under the eves though and freezing in winter and trying to heat the place was like burning £20 notes. Loved it......

Great advice - thanks!

We have a double stair set up. Use the top floor [2 bed and shower room] as guest room and aupairs room. Will probably make it into a seperate living space for DS when he hits the delightful teenage years!
It does separate out the house, and you need to be fit - imagine forgetting something in the kitchen when you've just made it to the top of the second set.

The two biggest problems are with the furniture and window cleaners. Furniture either has to be small enough to make it round the turn to the second set of stairs, or flat pack and carried up in pieces and assembled upstairs.
The window cleaners have to do the upstairs from inside as it is too high to get to from outside, so it needs to be kept tidy/accessible enough for them.