Vacant Stair - The Coconut Chronicles: Two Guys, One Caribbean Dream House - page 164

Alas, most of the staircases in Architectural Digest and The World of Interiors are
grand, sweeping and often marble.
Not quite what we had in mind.
So we moved on to travel magazines, many of which feature vacation houses in far-
flung locales. But since staircases in vacation homes tend to be utilitarian rather than dec-
orative, few staircases are actually depicted.
In fact, almost none.
“Let's look at photos of our own house,” Michael logically suggested one afternoon.
“Maybe we'll get inspired.”
So we downloaded the photos from our recent trip onto my laptop and prepared
ourselves for an epiphany. Here, after all, were beautiful shots of the great room, the bed-
room, the kitchen, the balcony.
We stared until our eyes hurt.
Nothing. Or at least nothing we hadn't thought of before. There just didn't seem to be
a practical solution to our problem.
“Maybe we should rebrand our advertising campaign,” I suggested. “You know, Vaca-
tion with your kids without ever seeing them , or, Stay with us and lose ten pounds walking
from bedroom to bedroom .”
Michael wisely ignored me and continued scrolling through our photos: sunset at the
beach, a long shot of the fort, an interior of the coffee bar in Isabel.
Hang on. The interior of the coffee bar. What's that in the middle of the picture?
It's a spiral staircase.
A spiral staircase!
Perfect.
☼ ☼ ☼
But—where to put it?
The great room seemed the obvious spot. Measuring in at twenty-four by twenty-six
feet, it could handle a moderate-sized hole in its floor with ease.
And yet.
If we put the staircase in the front corner, where the sofa and end table met, it would
spiral down into the front crook of the L-shaped living space on the lower floor, blocking
the French doors we'd paid so much to have installed.
Putting it in the back corner, near the bathroom door, would block access to the garden
door on the level below. Positioning it in the middle of the large back wall of the great room
might work, but doing so would eliminate most of the seating area on the lower floor.
Locating the staircase in the bedroom didn't make sense either. Although the bedroom
was large, it wasn't huge, and putting a four-foot wide hole in one corner of the room would
definitely limit the furniture placement possibilities.