Good morning and welcome to Saturday Morning Home Repair, where we talk about fixing houses, the things in them that are supposed to work for us, and fixing them up. An ad hoc cadre of building professionals and gifted amateurs attempt to answer questions that arise from readers, and offer encouragement and advice for those inclined to do things for themselves, if they can. We all do a lot of things, collectively, and can probably help out with any problems you might have. If you're having a problem, there's a good chance someone here has already experienced the same thing, and either solved it or figured out how to save you a couple of steps.
For almost fourteen years, we had the stairs from hell. And it proved to be the hardest puzzle we've had to solve yet. We circled it for years. We managed to repoint brick and replaster walls, first repair the I-block tin roof and finally replace it with standing seam tin, rebuild fireplaces and chimneys, repair floors, but the staircase.... Oh, the staircase almost did us in.
The problem was that when we first bought the house, it wasn't all there. We found a pile of slats (really plain balusters) in the upstairs closet, and the long curved gooseneck handrail had been broken off and was lying in an upstairs bedroom, along with another broken curve of black painted yellow pine. One of the newel posts was missing, and much of what wasn't there we assumed had been burned in someone's fire. And really, we had bigger troubles--the house was in pretty rough shape.
The upstairs landing.
The house was in one family for almost 200 years, and the descendants have been generous with information and encouragement, as well as boons of a more material nature. A few months after we moved in, I received an email from a retired minister who had been in the house in the year before we bought it, while rumors were swirling that the place was going to be bulldozed. Angry at the condition of the house, which had been abandoned for twenty years, enraged at the waste and finding the newel post loose, he pried it out of its place and hauled it off as a keepsake. He had planned to have it cut into paperweights for his relatives, but hadn't gotten around to it yet, when he learned that we bought the house and were going to restore it. Hence the email. He wanted to return it. A few weeks later, another cousin dropped by with the newel post wrapped in an old blanket.
So that was one problem solved. But the worst thing was that the handrail was a nearly perfect circle with just enough shaved off the bottom to seat the slats. All the other period handrails we could find were ovoid in shape, and much thinner than the 2.5 inch rounds we needed. We decided to keep looking, either for salvaged curved pieces we could fit into the existing railing or a woodworker who could help us out with gentle 90-degree curves in 2.5 inch round wood.
It wasn't a pressing issue. For the first few years we lived in the downstairs and closed off the upstairs with sheets of insulation duct-taped together. But as we settled in, as we got electricity in the bathroom (and what a boon that was!) and began to long for bedrooms, eventually we opened the upstairs and began work. It was pretty rough up there, and we shuttled between the two floors with a jury-rigged handrail, and slowly the bedrooms took shape. Still, the insoluable handrail issue remained.
We moved upstairs in the fall of 2005. For five years we tramped up and down the worn-out stairs, holding on to a jury-rigged handrail. Finally, in the fall of 2010, I decided it was time to start working on the stairs, and step up the search for a handrail maker. We didn't want to destroy the beautiful wear patterns of the treads, so a heavy sander was out. The paint on the treads didn't react to chemical stripping, so light hand sanders were really the only option.
It took almost a year. Not all at once, of course. But an hour here and an hour there, and slowly the rock-hard pine was revealed.
After finishing the treads, still puzzling on the handrail.
Finally, by luck, we found a craftsman who was equal to the task, Tom Thomas from
Fine Line Architectural Detailing, who took the existing broken curved rail and replicated it, along with some straight pieces. He mortise-and-tenoned them to the existing pieces, and suddenly the positive and negative spaces took shape.
Once the existing slats, original handrail and newel posts were scraped clean of cracked old paint, we were ready to put things back into place. We had to have eight slats replicated, to replace the ones that were lost over the years. Because the stairs were made by hand, we had to match the existing slats to their original places and toenail them back into the banister. It was like a jigsaw puzzle, with every match making the rest of the puzzle easier, until they were all in place.
With the slats in place and the banister back up, all that remained was the painting. Unfortunately, over the years people had nailed or stapled carpet and I don't even want to guess what else to the risers. When they pulled it loose, they also pulled out chunks of wood, which had to be filled and sanded, along with all the cracked paint.
When we scraped down the handrail, we found the original paint color and were able to reproduce it. The newel posts, banister and trim are back to the original color, and when I put down the first coat, I stood back and thought, Whoa, that's a whole lot of ugly!. But it grew on me. The slats, risers and woodwork are white, which is a bit of a cheat, because originally they were all faux-grained to look like walnut. More than a year in the making, twelve years in the planning, and it's all done.
And I think it looks damn good.
That's it!
Now it's your turn. With the turkey eaten up, what worlds are you conquering?