Concrete Stairs or Not?

castlewarren

Hi All

We are at the stage when we have to decide on weather we go for a concrete stairs or not. We are putting in concrete slabs for the first floor. We like the look of a wooden stairs so we either clad the concrete stairs or go for the wooden one. Walnut is the finish we would like but have been told it would be cheaper to actually build the wooden stairs than to clad a concrete stairs!

Has anyone any recent experience with this dilema?

Dr. Greenthumb

At the moment you'd get a walnut stairs made up for the same cost as the concrete stairs alone. If you do go concrete there is other cost aspects to consider; for example the price of the timber stairs would include for balustrade while that would have to be added on to the cost of the concrete stairs along with the walnut cladding to threads, risers, any half landing and the string face. with a concrete stairs there will be other additional costs such as screeding it in at the top & bottom and when you finish the soffit you will have to track / top hat it while with the timber the slab will screw straight to the underside of the stairs.

From experience though if i was building a house i'd spend the extra few quid and go concrete. I like my sleep and hate been woken by the sound of someone trodding up and down a hollow timber stairs.

mossfort

you could get a dgood shuttering carpenter to case the stairs and pour it .
it would work out cheaper than precast and should be done in a few days.

castlewarren

Thanks Greentumb and mossfort for the replies.

The stairs is a straight up 16 riser and the concrete stairs is an ex demo so its working out at €1,250, in perfect nic. Was quoted €8k to cladd it in Walnut, not sure if I would get a walnut stairs for that price.

I'm

Will fire you a PM - a friend of a friend ( I know, slightly tenuous ) found some lads in Leitrim that did exactly this job for her and she was delighted with the job - I didn't think the price was that expensive.