How are y’all arguing this? The banister makes it unquestionably obvious that it’s at the top. There’s no debate to be had here unless the banister was intentionally installed wrong just for the purpose of this meme, which would be crazy.
The mattress is at the top, y’all.
So if we are looking up the stairs then why is the carpet worn on the front and center of each stair step?
Because people drag shit up the stairs and that’s extremely cheap carpet?
IKR. This was the obvious answer 24 hours ago but here we are discussing wear patterns and contrast.
And do you suppose the banister would be installed if the mattresses were at the bottom?
If our view was from the top looking down at the bottom then the banister would be rotated 90 degrees towards us.
So the people walk on the wall? (Wear of the carpet and lack of visible ledge that stairs should have)
I guess I should address the “wear” on the carpet as well: it doesn’t look worn to me, it looks disturbed. Like before this person tried shoving their mattress up the stairs and got it stuck, they carried a heavy dresser or or something up the stairs and dragged it up each stair, sliding it along the carpet. I suspect this is a person moving into a cheap efficiency apartment, since the one my father moved into last when he was still alive looked extremely similar.
My stairs don’t have a visible ledge. I don’t know why people are acting like that’s standard. I think only one of the homes I’ve lived in has had a stairwell with ledges.
There’s no banister in the picture. It looks like maybe there’s a support for a banister, but that doesn’t magically make the tops of the steps into the sides of the steps.
If you are so pedantic so as to not consider the support for the banister as part of the banister, then frankly I have no interest in the necessary effort required to discuss this or any matter further with you.
I’m not the one being pedantic. Whatever that object is, it’s not clear that it’s a banister.
Ok. Then use what you know of gravity and look for things that should be the other way if this were at the bottom.
Exactly. I’m using what I know of gravity. The mattress should be resting on top of something. If we’re looking down, it is. If we’re looking up, it’s floating in mid-air, apparently wedged against both walls even though it doesn’t look firmly wedged on the right side.
Alternately the left side of it is wedged because of the bannister it’s butted into.
The stairs show a kick pattern and the paint appears broken linearly due to the movement of the carpeting when kicked. (Alternately it could be from top pressure when stepped on, the paint wants to stick to the wall not the step so 50/50)
The mattress itself appears to bulge towards the viewer.
It’s all about perspective, that’s the whole point of the picture.
I see evidence for it being at the top, you see evidence for otherwise and lots of folks show how little they’re able to regulate their emotions through simple friendly discussion ( not directed at you, my dude )
bottom, as we only can see the treads not the risers (that small inset underneath a step).
It’s the top of the stairs because in the top left of thr image you can see the banister support. If the mattresses were at the bottom then the angle of that support would be different
when the mattress is at the top, where is gravity and on what is it resting?
It could be wedged.
You think a folded in half mattress could get stuck in a stairwell? You might be on to something!
I think it might actually be held up by the other end of that banister.
Why is no one else talking about this.
There’s no debate. It’s at the top of the stairs.
I think it’s bottom too but I don’t agree with your reasoning, I’ve seen steps without that bit.
Edit: actually now I think top, I’ve been convinced by the daylight argument plus the realization that is a single mattress folded in half (I previously thought it’s two mattresses).
Edit: changed my mind again, made a top level comment
How does the single mattress in half bit make you think it’s at the top? If it were at the top, the force of the mattress trying to straighten itself out would push it down the stairs. Much more likely the mattress was pushed/ tossed/ fell down the stairs and got folded in that position, imo.
Edit: the shadows are also indicative of it being at the bottom: light source from above and and from the sides at the base of the stairs, either from an open door or window. Shadow cast from the door light source being cancelled by the light source from above the stairs.
Back when I thought it was two mattresses, I thought it couldn’t be at the top because the right mattress probably wouldn’t be held up like that. But since it’s one mattress, it can relatively easily be held at that angle with most of its weight resting on the step.
And that’s my main reason: it really seems like the mattress is being pushed towards that step, and I believe it’s being pushed by gravity. Doesn’t make as much sense for it to be pushed in that direction by someone.
I’m not married to it though, it’s a really tricky picture.
I’m not gonna lie, you’ve got me rethinking my position pointing out the right side of it. I do think though, that if it were at the top and resting on the one step, that the corner of the mattress resting on the step would be bowed in a bit more.
It is quite tricky.
Yeah. I’ve now found a reason that makes me convinced the mattress is at the bottom. I made a top level comment about it.
That’s what I was thinking too
You live in fancy houses!
I mean, it’s code for anything built during the age of home electricity.
Well, my house has electricity and the stairs do not have that indentation at all. I could take a picture of the steps from the bottom or the top and aside from the wear marks on the treads, you can’t see a difference.
built during
When was your home built?
Well after the beginning of the age of home electrification, but I’m not sure precisely. I’m renting my current house.
I don’t think any of my stairs have had such an exaggerated ledge of the tread like the picture in this thread. In my previous house (owned, built in 2000 something) it just had a little bump nailed on to the edge, but it was symmetric on both the tread and riser.
3/4" min to 1-1/4" max is code, with a 9/16" nosing. No nose is doable, but with a min step depth of 11", generally youre not seeing that outside of commercial spaces (and typically concrete).
Not sure where you are (or if your stairs are even up to code), but that’s what they are referring to.
Never lived in a house, only apartments with no stairs (inside the apartments) and this is obvious even to me. You can know something without ever having owned or lived with that thing.
its simply code where I live and my old home where I grew up was already old AF and had those risers and treads (albeit not as deep as they should have been, I always tripped)
And you can see the wear on the treads. plus the handrail mount in the top left would be at a very inconvenient height if we were looking from the bottom up
It’s at the top, I have that same bannister mount, it points upwards to the banister.
The mattress is wedged at the top of the stairs thanks to its extreme springiness.
This is what gets me confused. If we’re at the top, I see the banister mount turning horizontal, not up. Up from that POV would be towards the viewer, but it’s angled away which would be horizontal. We have to be looking from the bottom for it to be turning up in this photo. I have no idea how hundreds of people look at that and say it’s turning up.E: nevermind, the question asked where the mattress is, not where I am looking from. 🤣
The handrail argument doesn’t make any sense. It would be at the same height regardless of direction.
Also, the handrail mount is sideways if we’re looking down; if we’re looking up, it makes sense.
Maybe it is a light fixture.
Some stairs don’t have different looking risers, but you’re still correct because you can see wear marks from steps on the carpet.
agreed
At the top-left corner of the image we see a support bracket for the hand rail. The orientation of this bracket only seems to make sense if we are at the bottom of the stairs looking up at the mattress. The shadow cast by the mattress also looks like the light is above and slightly closer to the camera.
If we were at the top looking down, that would imply that the hand rail brackets were sideways instead of being vertical, and that the light was mounted on the wall instead of the ceiling. I have seen stranger things in construction but it would still be strange and unlikely.
So people walk on the face of the stairs now? 😁 Look at the wear of the carpet on the stairs.
Old carpet will show wear as people kick / drag against the backs of the steps. This is especially true for cheaper construction where the steps don’t have the typical overhang.
Bottom, you can see the carpet on the steps are worn out.
I’m a stairs half full kinda person
From the wear patten on the carpet I would say bottom, but the handle to the side makes me think top !..
It’s a curtain rod to a window midway up the stairs. We’re looking down a flight of steep older stairs. The mattress is lit by the window that is (mostly) under the rod, and by an open door at the bottom of the stairs.
The handrail probably has the hangers perpendicular to the railing instead of plumb to the ground. Just the cheapest ones you can get.
Could be a sconce instead of a weirdly placed handle.
Yes
I think it is the bottom of the top of the stairs because of the lighting to the bottom left of the mattress. That should be in shadow from the mattress if it was at the bottom of the stairs.
Not if the mattress is coming in from an outside door. That light could be daylight. In fact I believe this to be the case.
Curses!
We are looking down on the mattress and it is casting a shadow on the step below it. If we were looking up at the mattress it would be casting a shadow across the stairs in front of it.
Yup, I agree
Could be that there’s a door or window that’s contributing a lot of light down low, spilling under the mattress.
Definitely the bottom of the top. Or is it the top of the bottom?
top. you can see part of the handrail on the top left of the picture
I think that’s a heavy duty banister bracket, like this one:
Some banister brackets have a swivel type arrangement so that the bracket can be vertical underneath the handrail, no matter the angle of the handrail. Basic heavy duty brackets like this one are completely fixed in orientation, so they’re installed with the vertical support at an angle to support the handrail. I suspect the bracket in the photo is at a 45ish degree angle and only looks vertical due to the perspective. The banister has been deliberately cropped out of the photo to make the perspective as confusing as possible.
Personally I think the photo was taken from the top of the stairs looking down, based on the wear in the carpet.
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Who the hell puts carpet on their stairs? What year is this? 1973?
There’s nothing wrong with carpeted stairs.
Well dear friend, let’s agree to disagree. I wish you a pleasant end of the day!
May your steps be as uncushioned as you prefer. Love is love.
People who are too cheap to refinish old stairs. Source: I bought a house that had carpet on the stairs, and when we pulled up the carpet we discovered a worn out eyesore that cost thousands to update. In our case the previous owners were a cash strapped family of two young kids with a third on the way. They needed a bigger place for their family so I don’t fault them for going cheap on the stairs. The all-white paintjob and industrial grey carpet in the photo scream “landlord special” to me, so I’m less inclined to be forgiving in my assessment of the stairs in the photo.
Interesting. My parents’ apartment had carpeted stairs when they bought it (when I was around 3). About a decade later they completely renovated the kitchen and naturally the renovations creeped into other parts of the home. One of the builders showed them that underneath the carpet were beautiful stone steps. They instantly decided to take out the carpet, and the stairs are bare to this day. Here’s a photo I took just now (obviously from the bottom looking up):
Carpet is softer and more enjoyable to walk on than hard floors. I will never understand this weird anti-carpet trend we’ve gotten into in the past decade, except that it’s the same thing as grass lawn emulating the wide expanse of the wealthy.
Better grip where it counts.
I have those stairs with that carpet.
💯% this is looking down to a mattress at the bottom of the stairs.
Conclusive evidence:
Looking Down
Looking Up
(Sorry I was too lazy to get the low perspective)
Not convinced. It’s a different set of stairs and a different carpet. I have had stairs with a carpet more similar to the OP that did not have a riser. See elsewhere in these comments for a photo of these stairs, now bare. In the distant past, they were carpeted.
I think they’re cheap stairs without the bullnose. Makes it way easier to carpet. By the looks of the trim this is not a fancy apartment. The lack of bullnose contributes to the optical illusion.
Bottom, we can see dust and debris accumulated on the “run” part of the steps.
And you don’t see the nosing of the steps.
The metal bar on the top left indicates it’s at the top.
Bottom.
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The risers on the stairs are not visible.
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The wear on the carpet goes right to the edge. That’s consistent with people stepping on it, not kicking it on the way up.
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If it’s at the top, the mattress doesn’t appear to have any of its weight resting on a step. It could be so wedged in that it’s being held in place, and that it was wedged that way by someone awkwardly pushing at the ends of it in a way that wouldn’t seem to give them enough leverage to do that. But the obvious explanation is more likely, that it’s at the bottom of the stairs.
If it was at the top those would be some big steps you’d have to lift your leg up over
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Trick question. It is actually stuck halfway along the entire staircase; the stairs go further on behind the mattress. 😤
