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Railing)
The existing stairs and railing in our 1881 house were rather unique and really nice. Of course the height was not 100% according to code :) but the bigger problem was that upstairs the railing was taken out to make way for a tiny bathroom. We wanted to open up that space again for a hallway with light coming in through our historic bowed windows.
Therefore time to rebuild the railing around the stairwell. Mimicking as much as possible the railing of the old staircase and the profile of the existing spindles. Recreating the railing involved laminating three 3/4" boards and then using the tablesaw to match the profile, of course followed by the belt-sander. Couple coats of paint and it looked exactly the same as the handrail of the staircase, but now a touch higher.
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Spindles)
With stairs it is not too important, but around a stairwell you want to have a height of around three feet. Therefore I had to extend the profile of the existing spindles with another section. Unfortunately there wasn't a 'hidden behind the drywall' spindle that I could copy the original profile from.
Recreating the spindles required an elaborate jig and some complex router work. It was all about rotating the spindles 45 degrees. I needed quite a lot of spindles and 'times four' this took many days to accomplish. After that painting, sanding, painting, etc :). But the end-result was perfectly matching the spindles of the existing staircase.
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Hallway)
The final step was of course to install the new railing and spindles in the upper hallway. The spindles were first screwed bottom up to the lower plate on the floor. Then a groove was cut in the railing, fitting the spindles and small blocks were glued in between the spindles. Most of the painting was already done before assembly, just a final coat was enough.
The old staircase railing was a combination of white, black and beige. Repainting required a huge amount of stripping paint with a heatgun, followed by a lot of scraping and sanding. But the end result is that the hallway and stair railings are now completely matching. End good, all good.
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Willem van Schaik, Nova Scotia, 2019
http://www.schaik.ca/
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