A New Railing In The Works!

 14 June 2021

Okay! Things have started to move a little further along at the house. I'm still working on the site for our new building. The weather and my own schedule are slowing me down here, as well as the demand for local contractors. We would hire this work out, but everyone is scheduled months out, or don't even return our calls.

After about 10 loads of dirt, I finally got the site flat, level, and at least even with the highest grade point. I dug out the trench for the footer and set up some batter boards. I used 5' metal fence posts to mount the batter boards on because I wanted to make sure they didn't move, and we can reuse the posts later for something else.

Inside the house, I've also started work on the new stair railing. We decided that it was going to be a nearly futile task to find actual old railing that we liked, fit our stair layout, and had enough pieces to complete it. So we purchased some new railing materials from an online company. I've started with the easy parts first and will finish with the hardest part, the short drop and curve at the bottom of the stairs. First step (no pun intended) is to demo our beloved temporary railings.

Next, I secured an anchor block for each post to the floor. For the two posts next to the edge of the stairwell, I was able to sink these bolts in to a floor joist.

Then I put the posts up and got the first railing set.

The railings bolt in to the posts inside of a keyhole on the bottom of the railing.

Due to an error I made in decision making in the design department, we had to reconfigure the trim on the posts (compare to the previous picture of the posts) in order to make everything work together and look nice.

And after a days worth of work, the two easiest sections of the railing are done!

I finished putting the corbels on the study mantle. Amy has started her finishing work with a base coat for the faux finish.

She has also started, GASP!- do I dare say, to work on the painting of the outside of the house! Of course painting here always starts with prep work. We're doing this in sections so we can see how it looks, and then keep things manageable. First the scraping.

Then the cleaning.

And then spot priming any bare wood.

We're starting with 7 different colors. We'll see how they look and then keep going, or change colors, or add or subtract colors. We don't want to spoil a partial reveal yet, so suffice it to say for now, we are using the following colors: Black, Gold, Brown, Beige, Green, Red, and Blue.

As soon as we have enough area painted to fill a picture that shows all the colors, we'll let you see how it looks. 😉