Stairs in new house utterly lethal - ideas?

[SomewhatSilly]

In the two months we've been in our new house, both DH and I have slipped down the stairs twice, and the child of a friend once. The house is Victorian but the previous owners replaced the bottom section of the stairs with a space saving section to increase the floor space downstairs.

The section reminds me of a spiral staircase - full width section at one side tapering to what is basically a vertical drop at the other. And the carpet seems a bit slippy too.

Any ideas, please? What's a ballpark figure for replacing a staircase, if there is such a thing? Would replacing the carpet help?

Replacing the carpet might help if it is slippy - can you see under the stairs and see how much they've cut off? Stairs are surprisingly inexpensive, I think you'd be talking a few hundred just to replace the bottom bit. Our new staircase into the loft only cost about a grand.

We have painted stairs and very rarely slip, so it's probably something to do with your eye expecting their to be a certain amount of step and there not actually being that amount of step and so losing your balance. Like when you forget there's an extra step at the end of some stairs and it's like you fall through space for a second!

We have the same situation in our new house. We noticed it straight away and DH has worked out that the measurements of the stairs (drop and step) are just within the legal requirements. We still don't feel comfortable with them and we've decided to replace them. There are implications for relaxing them with regards ceiling height and taking out some of the floor space. A new standard staircase costs about £800 we've been told.

It depends on what you want-- MDF / pine oak and if you need them boarded out and decorated. A standard straight flight of stairs costs between 300GBP and few thousand for to spec.

The decorating (painting / staining) and boarding the back with plasterboard (if necessary) can cost up to 750k upwards.

Installation costs should be around 500GBP.

This goes up if its got winders our half landings etc.

We had to replace ours as the original victorian steps were too shallow for my husband's feet!

We have this in our dutch town house, honestly you'll get used to it. We were terrified at first, but now skip up and down in the dark.

Do you know, we've been looking to buy a house and the number of houses we've seen with unsafe steep stairs is unreal. It really puts me off especially with little children.

I think you are very wise to change it and I'm surprised at how inexpensive it sounds.

Hope it works out.

The one we're offering on has the least steep staircase we've encountered apart from the bungalows obvs!

if the only handrail is on the narrow steps side you need to change it to the other side. I have this at the top of my stairs and installed a handrail on the wide side. No probs.