In my past career life I was a buyer/planner. I have eleven plus years experiencing the constant joys (not) of explaining shortages and overages. I am happy to report that when it came time to do a home improvement project, I don't think I could have done a better job on planning or procurement. I ended up with practically no extra material and no shortages! Of course, that doesn't mean it wasn't quite the saga!
In my complete state of ignorance I thought, "why not demolish the old staircase and get a new one installed?" I was tired of the old handrail having the paint chip off and wanted to have a staircase that was more in my style. I think my style is best described as "Old World Elegance!"
Here is the inspiration photo that I used to determine what kind of spindles and newels I wanted, and what I wanted the pattern to be. I'm pretty impressed with myself that I made it a reality. I went with the pattern in the bottom photo, but the newel shape in the top photo.
The before and after is quite the transformation. Of course getting there was a journey!
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| Original |
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| New and improved! |
Let me take you back to the beginning: planning the job and buying the necessary parts. I started by attaching stickies to my staircase so I could plan my layout.
I bought a few styles from the supplier (an online company in Georgia) and once I checked them out, I ordered my job parts. Little did I know that that would only be order number two of three. It turns out that I made my purchase based on the number of spindles in the original staircase. After I got my parts I determined that wasn't going to work. The white spindles were over an inch in diameter and the iron ones were only half an inch. So in order to keep to code and not have the spacing between spindles greater than 4 inches, I needed to go back and increase my spindle quantities. I used my highly skilled mathematical mind to figure out that 28 spindles should replace the 22 from the original staircase on the back section. On the front section I kept to the original 17. Since the spacing was not consistent on the original staircase, I was able to space them out and still keep within the code.
And then the fun began. I put up spindles on the staircase so I could visualize the pattern. And then I played dominoes with all of them falling onto my hardwood floor below. Thankfully I only made one slight ding!
Next came demo day! Man the old staircase was built to withstand a major calamity! My handyman had to be very careful not to ding the knee wall.
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| Dang those were overkill! |
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| Look ma no hand(rail)! |
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| Ding in newel |
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| Different color on same handrail |
Before I got too far into the job, I discovered several issues. One of the newels had a ding in it and one of the handrails had a section that was colored differently than the rest of the rail. But, using my brilliant mechanical mind (which I thought was non-existent) I determined we could cut the newel and use it for one of the 35" ones instead of using it as a 45" one with the ding still showing. I also calculated that the discolored section of the handrail could be a stand alone issue if we used it for the very first section.
With the minor issues resolved we were off to the races. We started the installation process. My handyman did an excellent job of anchoring two of the spindles deeper into the knee wall to act like support beams. We put them where the initial staircase had double wide spindles. And then we stopped for the day. The next day it dawned on me that we had a problem. We hadn't put down the shoe first. So Mike had to use his strength to lift the spindles out of the epoxy filled holes so we could install correctly. Luckily we discovered this early enough that the epoxy hadn't fully set.
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Oh no, no shoe!
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| All newels installed! |
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Getting the shoes spaced out properly
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checking spindle pattern
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Comparison to inspiration photo
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Top section spindles installed
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To say the back section went without some hiccups, would be to leave out a few steps! All the spindles were custom cut after careful measuring and checking levels, but when we went to install the handrail some of the drilled holes were off so Mike had to drill a different angle. Also some of the spindles somehow came up short! I had bought a few extra so we changed out four spindles. Why can't walls and knee walls be straight? Why can't all that careful planning actually go right the first time? Why, because I needed something to write about in this blog! Unfortunately I didn't buy any extra scrolls and two of them were still coming up short. We made it work by installing a dowel into the top end of the spindle so it would extend the length of the spindle. Since we were using decorative shoes you can't tell where we worked this magic! We filled the bottom holes with epoxy before installing the spindles and had planned to do that at the top, but getting the handrail on was such a trick that we decided to forgo that step! Each of the shoes has a screw set that keeps the shoe tight to the spindle so epoxy isn't mandatory. In some cases the top holes were a bit big after the re-drilling so Mike just jammed some masking tape into the hole to take up any extra space. "A" for effort. "A" for making it work!
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| Back section almost done |
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Yes! Back section done!
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Now that we were moving on to the bottom section I took a moment to see how the back section looked from my bed. I love how my excellent layout resulted in me being able to see a twist, scroll, and basket!
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| On to front section |
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| Checking that everything is level |
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| Almost done! |
And the build is done! Original quote was for around nine hours! I guessed 15! Add the two together and that wasn't even right!
Time for another before and after photo. Now all that's left is to figure out the stain and touch up painting!
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| Too purple, too pink, to brown, oh my! |
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| Let's drink to success! |
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| We are done except for paint touch up! |
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| It's Cosmo time! |
I think I'm done with home improvements. I designed the front yard, but left it to the experts to install. After designing and assisting on the staircase the only thing left would be for me to design and do the work on the next project. That won't happen. No tools for this gal!
I bought a few styles from the supplier (an online company in Georgia) and once I checked them out, I ordered my job parts. Little did I know that that would only be order number two of three. It turns out that I made my purchase based on the number of spindles in the original staircase. After I got my parts I determined that wasn't going to work. The white spindles were over an inch in diameter and the iron ones were only half an inch. So in order to keep to code and not have the spacing between spindles greater than 4 inches, I needed to go back and increase my spindle quantities. I used my highly skilled mathematical mind to figure out that 28 spindles should replace the 22 from the original staircase on the back section. On the front section I kept to the original 17. Since the spacing was not consistent on the original staircase, I was able to space them out and still keep within the code.
And then the fun began. I put up spindles on the staircase so I could visualize the pattern. And then I played dominoes with all of them falling onto my hardwood floor below. Thankfully I only made one slight ding!
With the minor issues resolved we were off to the races. We started the installation process. My handyman did an excellent job of anchoring two of the spindles deeper into the knee wall to act like support beams. We put them where the initial staircase had double wide spindles. And then we stopped for the day. The next day it dawned on me that we had a problem. We hadn't put down the shoe first. So Mike had to use his strength to lift the spindles out of the epoxy filled holes so we could install correctly. Luckily we discovered this early enough that the epoxy hadn't fully set.
Now that we were moving on to the bottom section I took a moment to see how the back section looked from my bed. I love how my excellent layout resulted in me being able to see a twist, scroll, and basket! 
