try pearstairs.co.uk they always do mine very good quality have a look at their website.

This is one of those piece-of-string questions which very much depends on who you go to.

The bugger is the handrail and stringer on the curved side because it depends how it's made. The stringer is no real problem and nor is the handrail as long as you can accept the compromise of having it made by laminating the section, although all that does is eliminate the fiddly bit involved in forming it from the solid.

Be prepared to at least consider a fabricated section rather than a solid. Until I retired and closed the workshop I used to keep a 2 metre section to show potential customers who would otherwise have rejected the idea out of hand. As it happened I only had to use the technique once, although I did show the section to at least three other customers who eventually went for a winder set-up because of the cost - although other quotes they'd had from companies making the handrail out of the solid were stratospherical compared to mine - and they all agreed that the "look" was not only perfectly natural but actually "more interesting", an expression I didn't push them to explain!

In the US you can buy the sections to laminate the handrail already machined, but I was never able to source the stuff here in the UK, even having asked many of the US suppliers if they'd ship to the UK or knew of any distributors over here.

The prices you've been quoted are of the scale I'd associate with conservation work involving a lot of hand work on site, although a lot of factory-based stair manufacturers see the potential for attaching a premium to the kind of "quality" job implied by a curved staircase, despite much of their work being done with CADCAM.

I don't know why we make such a big deal over this kind of job over here, in the States it's bread-and-butter work and a friend I made via the US Woodweb forum turns out CNC-machined curved staircases as a matter of routine.

I went onto the Woodweb forum to find a reference to curved handrails and you'll see here that laminating the section is bread-and-butter stuff to them...

http://www.woodweb.com/knowledge_base/Allowing_for_Springback_in_Laminated_Railings.html

If you go to a traditional joinery shop who forms the rail from the solid (or even the laminated, which is formed along the curved stringer) then he/she will be working it all out thus...

http://www.woodweb.com/knowledge_base/Helical_Handrail_Math_for_Spiral_Stairs.html

One thing, however the curved rail section is formed, it still has to be machined to have a profile formed on it. I can tell you that that's when your heart is in your mouth. The wise joiner locks the workshop door and turns the phone off.

Don't know whether Biff could do it for you?

Just edited my post above to include a handrail suggestion of self-generating geometry.

I had a very good quote from Pearstairs but you measure yourself. As the quote was very similar to a good local joiner I went with him. At least if an error occured I had a door to knock on. Pearstairs did seem very good though and I know of people that have used them with no complications.

Hi FT

The hall is quite a small area. Here is a suggested design from one of the expensive joiners that gives the shape and measurements of the hall.

I would add that we do not want the stairs to end in front of the door (I don't think the suggested design meets buiding regs that require a landing of 400mm) but for it to face more into the house.

or

ST? Oi!

Oops sorry FT, its all this hectic pace of life - I am currently in my brothers house overlooking the Cromarty Sutors - quite idyllic - but clearly it has made my brain very sleepy