Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire
Staircases and balustrades in Newton Mearns
You almost never need to replace a staircase. In houses of this age the structure, the strings and the treads are usually perfectly sound, and everything that makes a stairwell feel dated is the part you can take off without touching any of it.
What actually changes
Spindles, handrail, base rail and newel caps come off. The strings and treads stay. In their place go either a glass balustrade with a timber handrail, or new spindles in a different profile, and the newel posts get repainted or re-capped. It is a two to three day job and it changes the entire upstairs.
Why glass does more than it looks like it should
A run of forty spindles is effectively a solid wall when you view it at an angle, which is how you always see it coming up the stairs. Replacing that with glass does not add any light to the house, it just stops blocking the light that was already there. In a landing with one window the difference is more dramatic than people expect.
The rules that govern it
Domestic guarding has to meet the heights set out in the Scottish technical handbooks, and no gap anywhere in it may allow a 100mm sphere through. That governs clamp spacing and the gap under each glass panel as much as the glass itself. We set out to those requirements first and let the panel sizes follow, rather than ordering glass and working backwards.
Lead times
The glass is made to the measured opening, so it cannot be ordered until the old balustrade is off and the openings are measured. That is the long pole in the job. Anyone quoting a complete glass balustrade inside a week of the first phone call is guessing at it.
Before & after
Opening Up a Dark Stairwell With Glass and Oak
Swapping a run of painted timber spindles for toughened glass and an oak handrail pulled daylight back into a landing without touching the structure of the stairs.