Victorian staircase renovation

Do avoid ripping out Victorian staircases wholesale and replacing them with pseudo-Victorian ones. Far better to repair if at all possible because you will it hard (and expensive) to find authentic reproduction of the often elaborately carved and decorated balusters and newel posts found in Victorian houses. In the Victorian period the newel post varied from being a piece of solid carved wood to a simple cluster of wooden sticks. The balusters were often of quite complex designs, scrolled and twisted into floral and gothic shapes or carved into intricate fretwork. Towards the end of the century simple stick balusters became more fashionable.

Victorian stairs were generally of wood in the south-east of England, and were often elaborately decorated, even in quite ordinary houses, with a mahogany handrail, turned balusters and prominent newel posts. This is why you can easily achieve that expensive look by simply renovation your stairs. Of the many different baluster designs, 'spindle' was the commonest, largely because it was easy to mass-produce on a lathe, but not to be forgotten the different designs of custome made spindles.