Replacing a Spiral Staircase

I've done similar (spiral to larger spiral and moved two feet). I think you'll need a GC, an architect, a structural engineer, and an expediter. Your building may also ask for an independent review.

Hate to break it to you, but I think you're looking at a minimum of three months' wait and probably more like six months plus before you can cut the hole in the floor. A co-op board will not look at your plans until you close, and is likely going to want its own experts to weigh in. Then there's the DOB.

Our scope was larger, but first plans to breaking ground was eight months. And everyone told us it was fast....

lad's right.

If it's the apartment I think it is, then you've got an 11.5' floor-to-floor height. That's 17 risers of about 8" and 16 treads of about 9". That means a run of 12'. If code for overhead clearance is still 7', then you need to cut a hole of about 3'x9'. That's 72 ft² versus the current hole of about 36 ft².

Finding the space is going to be the problem, and you need an architect. An obvious place would be parallel to the front hall, narrowing the downstairs BR by about 3', but there's a column in that decorative fireplace projecting from the BR wall, so that's another 1.5' taken from the BR. It may turn out that the previous owner did the spiral staircase because that was the best option.

If I'm guessing wrong about the apartment, the principle still holds true: two of the bedrooms are going to take a hit.

Oops, 27 ft², not 72 ft². It's the shape that'll be the problem.

Lad or NWT...are spiral staircases "legal"? I had a fireman tell me that you "are not suppose to have them"...not really sure what he meant by that...I looked at the building code and it doesn't say they aren't allowed.

Nintzk: Spiral staircases are not illegal. They generally can't be used as required exits. There are exceptions for mezzanines and balconies. In the instance of a duplex apartment that was combined, the "other" hallway exit can generally be viewed as the required exit so you can install a spiral staircase.

Spiral stairs are legal in duplexes if at least 30" wide. Note, I've seen many that are not legal. Prior to renovation my place had 24" stairs. Not sure if the '68 building code allowed that or if it was never up to code. In any case, the DOB insisted we widen the stair and would not allow us to extend the same 24" stair to the roof level.

Were your 24" stairs grandfathered in and you just wanted to replace them or did the city require you to remove them?

Even without building your staircase it would be very optimistic to expect to move within a month, even if all you needed was a few touch-ups and 'minor' work.

With the staircase, you would do well to move in before year end.

Hi nycsquire,

Congratulations on finding a place you want to go into contract with. I so get wanting to get rid of the spiral staircase.

Depending how confident you are that you will be approved by the board, how good your relationship is with the sellers and how time sensitive you are. I would recomend starting now, if you are comfortable with all of the above.

The alteration agreement that you submit to the buildings board, attaches to that unit NOT the owner who submits it. Therefore you ask that the current owner submits (i.e. signs) the plans you and your architect create to the board, and obviously you will pay any costs incurred. That will get the process started with the board.

Before this you contact my favorite architects HS2 and set up an appointment with them (I have recommend them before, they are amazing) Tom (the principal) has a structural engineer and expediter in the team and therefore will be able to give you a reliable time line of how long it will take......these guys are fast and good.

Read my previous link about HS2 http://streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/30210-interior-designer-architect-project-manager

I hope this helps,

Best wishes,
Gabrielle

Gabrielle, thanks for the advice. We gave them a call.

NWT - wrong apartment. We already have a large opening for the staircase. Ours will require us to take out about 18" x 36" in additional floor.

lad - 3 months?! I don't get it. The staircase is prefabricated and dropped in. The opening is already there. The only real work that needs to be done on-site is the enlargement of the opening by a couple of feet. Can you walk me through what is going to take up all of that time?

architect 2 weeks
file paperwork with the city then wait.... with expeditor 2-3 months, without 4-6 months
plans get approved, then
make the opening larger and install staircase 2 week

this is NYC, nothing is easy if you need something from the gov't.

I see. So what is stopping me from filing the paperwork with the city now and having the approval in hand before I even close on the apartment?

nyce,
You would need to convince the current owner to allow access to the apt. for your architect and engineer to review the site and prepare
plans.Then you will need to get the owner to agree to Asbestos testing in the apartment.Then you would have to convince the co-op board and the owner to sign-off on the filing documents that go to the Dept. of Buildings. You will need to pay for all of these services plus filing and expediting of the plans.Other than that,you are good to go!

spanky: in practice are these achievable? How often is such progress before closing? Can one place such cooperation as a condition for signing a contract? I was once a tenant in an apt under contract and both the landlord and buyer exploited this and dragged out my tenancy and in that period got all the permissions and once we moved out, purchase closed the next day and the construction started the next week.

Matsui,
The exclamation point at my final comment was meant to indicate sarcasm. I doubt one could ever get all the parties needed, to agree to
all of the steps that I laid out.It is difficult to get any structural work approved by co-op boards;how much assistance do you think
they would give to a non-shareholder that they barely know.There may even be legal issues involved with granting permission for
work, to the party that does not own the shares yet. I could go on and on....and I am sure others here will.

Nintzk, the 24" stairs were not an issue until we applied to the DOB.

nycesquire, are you sure you can easily cut the section of the floor you want to cut? Your building is probably going to want a structural engineer to calculate weight load. This may involve making several big holes (at least 2' x 2') in the ceiling of the lower floor of your apartment to understand how the beams are laid out.

Depending on the answer, you may need to sister some of the existing beams, which could necessitate tearing down the entire ceiling of your downstairs. We hit the jackpot and not only had to tear down the ceiling, but also had to put in a steel beam and two steel hangers. I cannot tell you how expensive or how complicated it was to cut a section of the floor that's actually smaller than the one you want to cut. Tight floorplan, and load-bearing beam in the wrong place....

Even if it turns out you CAN easily and simply cut the floor, expect to spend a bare minimum of $5,000 by the time you go before the DOB, and probably more. Any kind of structural alteration in this city is never easy nor cheap.

Nycesquire,

You need your building to sign off on the paperwork before submitting to the dept of buildings. They will not do that prior to closing

Any sense of cost to replace a spiral staircase with a regular in a duplex? I'm guessing it's the one that NWT is referring to ? UES?

No, mine was UWS.

I'd go with what lad said. He's reasonable and not hyperbolic, and his "expensive and complicated" means just that.

Are we talking $50k or $300k?

It's all going to depend on how much you have to move -- support/framing, electrical, plumbing, ducting, etc. In general, I'd say more like $50k assuming you're not touching anything important.

Whenever you're moving stuff, there's often a lot of "collateral damage." You may need to replace the whole floor. In our case, part of our kitchen floor was affected by the staircase move. To replace the kitchen floor, which went underneath the cabinets, would've meant taking out the whole kitchen aside from the upper cabinets. (Fortunately, we removed one cabinet, carefully removed a couple of tiles from underneath, replaced them with non-matching ones, and used the matching tiles in the visible areas. Our other floors are tongue-and-groove parquet, and we hand-cut new pieces to match the original, then refinished the whole floor.) We cut smack through the center of our HVAC ducting. All of the ducting had to be re-made and re-routed through the apartment (there goes the rest of the ceiling....).

Technically, to get required hallway width, we also should have moved the bathroom wall back 6" -- which would've meant demolishing one wall of tile (necessitating replacement of all tile in the bathroom), replacing our tub with a shower, etc -- basically, a whole new bathroom minus a sink and toilet. Thanks to "self-certification," we left it alone. But in a bigger building that does independent examinations, who knows if we could've gotten away with that.

These are just a few examples of many of how moving anything can cause scope and costs to spiral out of control.

And all of this assumes you can get past the building and the DOB. My building is very small and very lenient. I cannot imagine a larger building allowing what we did. (Given how painful it was, I can't imagine my own building allowing it again....)

Wow! Thank you for your comprehensive response.....something to think about with this unit. I just can't imagine living with the tight little spiral staircase that is in place now.