Stairs You Won’t Believe … Really!

We know what a house looks like, right? Houses have a front door, kitchen and some number of  bedrooms and bathrooms. If you've got a second floor, there are stairs but do you have a slide next to the stairs like the one shown here?

Americans are a very mobile society so when we buy or remodel our homes, we're always thinking forward to the day when we want to sell the house. I've always thought of my houses as both a home and financial investment and yet, my question is why we maintain things like front doors that never get used, dining rooms that only get used 3 or 4 times a year and whirlpool bathtubs that never get used (read Bathtubs to Enjoy Life or Sell Your House?).

Here we're going to explore a really fun addition to stairs, a children's slide to you can walk or slide down from floor to floor. Have fun and see why we can (should) challenge traditional thinking to create homes for today's lifestyles, not yesterday's traditional house. Forget traditional stairs — I want to challenge you to think outside the box, to consider how you can use stairs for other purposes that suit your family and lifestyles.

When I saw the photo below left on Pinterest, it took me a minute to recognize the slide. We've expect things to look the way they always do so we're not prepared for things we've never imagined. The surprise sparked one of my hot buttons about today's houses — why can't they be different?

While our children are young, why we can't build in some fun, whimsical home features for our children. I've seen firemen poles you can slide down, port holes so kids can peak downstairs and watch the adults when they're supposed to be sleeping, and when I saw this slide next to the stairs, I had to write them and who says there's an age limit to sliding down the stairs?

Poking fun at myself … I have to thank daddytypes.com for writing about the Spiral Staircase Slide.

Indoor Slides – For Kids and Adults

We're used to children's slides outdoors, where they're part of a swing set or playground. What fun to find these novel slides indoors, tucked next to stairs so you can walk upstairs … and slide down when you (or the kids) want. There don't appear to be any rules in how you implement indoor stairs:

• Indoor stairs can be straight (upper right) and I like that the wall provides for safety versus needing any railings.
• Many stairs with slides are circular, although you'll notice below that the slide may be inside or outside the stairs and I'm not sure why there aren't any safety precautions, i.e. no building codes for indoor slides?
• Taller spaces (there are some interesting slides in large, public places) tend to curve but aren't necessarily circular, like the one on the right below.

… like you've heard before, a picture is worth a thousand words!