The New Stairwell, At Last

It took us one extra weekend from what we planned, but I’m glad to say the stairwell is officially done! We technically started this project in August of 2015, when we opened up our stairwell. To bring our stairs up to code, we needed to put in a small stretch of banister in this area…but then I wanted it to match with what was upstairs, and then I realized we didn’t like the banister upstairs, and then we decided we’d just replace all of the banisters/balusters, and, in conclusion, it took us 2.5 years to figure it out.

Last year, I realized I wanted to make our own balusters because we didn’t like the ones the store offered, and they were expensive and we’d need about 26 of them to do upstairs and downstairs. I saw an episode of Fixer Upper, and she used simple square, white balusters with the dark stained wood I wanted for the banister. Perfect!

So, we got some raw lumber and Nik cut all the balusters then we primed and painted each of them:

 

We also bought the banisters, raw red oak, and sanded and stained them to match our floors:

Finally, last weekend we began demo of our old banisters:

We popped off the railing pretty easily, but we found the balusters were screwed into the base piece, which we were not expecting:

 

This derailed our plans to use this base board to add dowel holes to for the new balusters, since the screws couldn’t be fully removed without removing the board, and they were in the way. We didn’t want to remove the board because then we’d have to remove the newel post at the end (which we were planning to simply paint and keep in place). We brainstormed, and decided to simply add a second board on top. Not my favorite idea, but once it’s painted white it all blends together and it saved us a substantial amount of work.

So, we got all the rest of the balusters unscrewed and clipped off the metal screws:

Then we painted the new board white, and Nik drilled 3/8″ holes into it at the right spacing (figuring out the math for the spacing was hands down the most time consuming part of this project! The gaps, and the width of the balusters, and accounting for baseboards, etc…it was trickier than it seemed!). He also drilled 3/8″ holes into the bottom of our balusters:

 

Then we used wood glue and 3/8″ dowels and put them in place:

Our plan was to then put on the banister (with the baluster tops fitting into the plowed bottom and then cutting the little filets to go into the gap between each baluster), but after trying to fit in 19 of the balusters simultaneously into that plowed railing, we quickly realized it was not to be. So we gave up and decided we would just attach the filet as one long piece, put 3 nails at the top of each baluster to prevent twisting, and move on with our lives. When we removed the old banister, this was also how the people who built our house did it. We judged their method at first and scoffed at what bad contractors they were, but we ended up doing the same thing! And you know what? It’s still super sturdy.

Then we popped the banister on and nailed up into it through the filet. This weekend we did some patching and painting to cover the screw holes and sealed the wood banister, and now it’s done! 

You can see in those picture we also got the simple railing going up the stairway wall mounted. This one was pretty easy, with just a couple mitered corner cuts needed to finish it up:

 

And finally, we tackled the downstairs portion. We put this off because, well, everything is more complicated with angles!

Here’s the gap we’re filling:

We used a similar strategy, with holes drilled into that board and into the bottom of the balusters that had been cut at a 41 degree angle. The balusters went in first, followed by the filet, and finally the banister:

 

I’m really happy with how it turned out, and it feels so good to have this major project behind us. Before I show the ‘after pictures’, here’s a little timeline of the evolution of this stairwell.

August 2015:

September 2015:

April 2016:

April 2017:

March 2018, and Gunnar approves:

And, upstairs as well:

The total cost of this project was really only a few pieces of raw lumber for the banisters (~$20), paint ($15), and the 3 pieces of banister ($155) and the extra base piece for upstairs ($12), so about $200.  Now, on to the next project!