Grand Foyer Staircase — Bird's Eye View

Grand foyer staircases in Marietta's large traditional homes — the 4,000-square-foot Colonials and Georgians built throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s — are the most architecturally complex staircase renovations we do. They typically feature a curved lower tread, a landing balcony visible from below, classical columns flanking the entry, and a sweeping two-story view that puts the staircase on display from the moment you open the front door.

This Marietta home had all of that, plus a secondary staircase at the rear of the house that we also addressed as part of the same project. The main staircase had twelve treads on the main run, a landing, and eight treads on the upper run — standard for a traditional two-story layout. But the curved front tread and the railing that wraps around the balcony landing added significant complexity to both the tread fabrication and the baluster installation.

Curved treads can't be cut from a standard plank — they have to be glued up from multiple pieces of oak and routed to shape. We fabricated the curved tread off-site, templating the radius from the existing tread profile. Getting the radius wrong means a visible gap at the riser or a tread that overhangs the nosing at the wrong angle — both of which look like mistakes to anyone walking up the stairs.

The medium stain on the treads was matched to the existing main floor finish — a warm medium brown that the homeowners had had installed when the house was built. Matching a twelve-year-old stain requires testing on spare boards until the formula is right, because stain colors shift slightly as they age. We got it within two shades on first test and dialed it in on the second.

The bird's eye view from the second-floor landing is the photograph that tells the whole story. You can see the full geometry of the staircase — the straight upper run, the landing, the lower curved tread — and the classical columns that flank the entry. Medium oak treads against white risers and white columns is a proportion relationship that works specifically because the oak is warm and the white recedes.

White spindles and handrail were finished to match the home's existing painted trim. The balcony railing was re-stained to match the treads — it had been painted over at some point in the home's history, and removing the paint required heat gun work and hand sanding to avoid damaging the profile. The final result shows a staircase that looks original to the house's architecture rather than retrofitted.