One of the main and most obvious features that you see as you walk into our house is our spiral staircase. It certainly has the wow factor, and now I wouldn’t have it any other way, but to start with I wasn’t so sure. In fact I wasn’t even sure about viewing the house as I didn’t think I was keen on spiral staircases.

That went back to growing up and being afraid of falling through “slatty stairs” as I called them. I remember the Whitgift Centre (a 1970s shopping centre in Croydon where I grew up) had these and I’d edge up them cautiously to get to the upper level. Pretty crazy, huh? Especially as there was no way I’d ever fall through that gap as a teenager.

But anyway, back to viewing our house. MOH couldn’t understand why I wasn’t keen to see it as otherwise it sounded perfect, and so he said he’d view it on his own. Err, hang on, I don’t think so were pretty much my exact thoughts. I wasn’t sure that this was a decision that could be made without me being present, and so off we went, together.

It was just as well I went, as even on that first visit we were mentally placing our furniture in the house. And you know what, somehow it didn’t matter about the stairs at all. Now some fifteen years later we’re very much used to them and forget that others see them as something more unusual.

But are they unusual? I don’t think so, maybe I’m just in tune with spiral staircases whether they’re wood and steel like ours or the classic steel spiral stairs that you most probably thought of when I mentioned a spiral staircase.

If like me you’re a fan of the many home shows on TV, such as Grand Designs, Building the Dream and The Restoration Man and many more you’ll know that staircases no longer need to be purely functional. There’s plenty of options to buy beautiful and stylish stairs online in the UK of all designs, and no doubt you’ll be spoilt for choice.

I’d never have guessed how much our spiral stairs would feature in and embody life in this house, but they have, in ways I’m not sure either of us would have predicted.

They were decorated with flowers, which matched my bouquet and table flowers, for our wedding back in 2007, and last year were very much a part of the paper cut that told the “story of us” to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary last year.

So ultimately there’s a life lesson here, don’t rule things out because of an irrational fear or because you’ve no experience of them. Give things a try, and like me, you could be pleasantly surprised.

* This is a collaborative post but all views are my own.