A Good Staircase

Hello, I'm alek from From the Right Bank to the Left Coast and I'll do my best to entertain you today. I was flipping through my inspiration files, trying to decide on a topic worthy of Design Crisis and I noted that I had a lot of pictures of stairs. Stairs don't get most people excited but I apparently have a thing for them. Have a look at these beauties:

These definitely prove that something functional doesn't have to be boring. And in my case, the staircase in our current house is one of the things that sold us on it. Considering where our house is, that's what you call a good staircase. Remember Karly's post about living on the wrong side of the tracks? That would be me.

Allow me to elaborate. We live in Seattle and a couple of blocks away from our house, there's one of those Neighborhood Crime Watch signs. That's all well and good but this one specifically says, "We report all suspicious activity and prostitution." Yeah, didn't see that before we moved in. I think our realtor drove us around the long way so we wouldn't before we signed the papers.

It also didn't help that we had moved here from a very tony part of Paris; this just accentuated the "Sanford and Son" thing going on at my neighbor's place. The theme song used to go through my head every time I pulled into our driveway. And that's never a good sign.

But we love our house and here's one reason. These are our stairs:

It's made entirely of recycled materials and this is what you see as you go up:

I don't know if these photos do it justice but we think the whole thing is pretty darn cool.

I'm thankful that the stairs did help sell the house because to be totally honest, my hood has actually turned out to be a pretty nice place to live. I haven't seen a single hooker. And even the Sanford and Son neighbors have cleaned up a little. Though I still like to hum the theme song to myself every now and then.

Thanks so much for having me, Karly and Erin. And congratulations, Erin! He's already a total looker and a charmer.

(Photos: 1.Maynard Architects 2.Studio Ilse 3.CDG Arquitectos 4.Toonpool 5.Starpulse 6&7.alek)