North Valley Forge received a brief from its Surrey-based client with some ideas for the concept of an organic-type, feature staircase that was very sleek, modern and different to anything the company had ever produced before. North Valley Forge’s design team sketched out a few ideas and, with its client’s input, produced a small sample of what the team envisaged. From this, and with the client’s love of butterflies, North Valley Forge arrived at a concept to meet the client’s requirements.
The balustrade was to inhabit a large detached house with extensive gardens in a beautiful leafy suburban area of Surrey. The actual staircase structure itself is made from solid limestone and was beautiful in itself. “We feel we got the design of the balustrading exactly as the client wanted, and with the choice of decor to complement this, it is the main feature of the house and the very first thing you see when you walk through the main entrance to the house,” comments Darren Weatherill, Director at North Valley Forge.
Following a site survey, North Valley Forge agreed a price with its client to carry out this commission and then planned production. Once the limestone staircase was in position, North Valley Forge’s site installation team asked the main contractor to cover it fully in plywood. As Darren Weatherill explains: “We wanted to make all of the balustrade structure in situ, to make sure every curve and sweep matched perfectly.”
North Valley Forge’s site installers took along specialist machinery along with oxygen and acetylene torches to heat and form all of the materials in order to create the ‘carcass’. Once this was done, the team braced the ‘carcass’ with temporary supports, before cutting it into manageable sections in order to bring it back to the workshop in Nelson, Lancashire, without any distortion.
Once back in the workshop, all of the infill work required was hand-forged, adding various features, such as the butterflies, in order to finish the balustrade off from a manufacturing point of view.
Following hours of sanding, cleaning welded joints and making sure the balustrade was perfect, the team then painted the balustrade in the company’s very own formulated ‘Smithy Black’ high build vinyl paint, adding gold and bronze patina highlighting to ‘lift’ the design and give it more colouring under the lighting in the hallway.
The curved landing, where the balustrade was installed, was about 6m long with a limestone fascia – the actual staircase itself was approximately 4.5m long with limestone steps and fascias. Wrought iron always complements natural materials, such as stonework, and the contrast between the lightness of the limestone and the darkness of the balustrading for this project seemed to create a fantastic feature with the finished balustrade.
The balustrading was installed using hidden fixings chemically-resined into the limestone, which the team at North Valley Forge felt was a far more discrete finish than any bolts. The initial shaping and mock-up of the ‘balustrade carcass’ took around four days for two members from North Valley Forge in situ at the client’s house. A further 200 hours were spent finishing and painting the balustrade at the company’s Nelson-based workshop, whilst the installation took four days with the help of two members of the site installation team.
Once manufactured, the cleaning process took hours and hours of grinding, sanding and filing the joints. While the butterfly detailing was laser-cut and individually shaped, before being added to the balustrading.
Whilst this was a very testing project, requiring a lot of skill at all stages, North Valley Forge’s experienced craftsmen thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of creating something completely different to anything they had ever made before and everything ran smoothly.