Heritage – hallway railing

I’ve seen a few treatments for joining a stair railing to a balcony railing. The easiest by far is a double newel post option, but the way the room is set up they would have to be literally side by side with no gap between them. Not the most appealing aesthetic. :\

My Dremel savvy friend and I were talking about this today, and he had a brilliant solution: offset the newel posts and have a small angled section of railing between them. I think this will make perfect visual sense and it also eliminates having to navigate around a harsh corner on the way to the bathroom. :D

Before I could address that, I needed to tackle the railing and spindles around the balcony. I marked the floor where the spindles should go starting with the spindles adjacent to the stairs. I thought those adjacent spindles should line up, even though you probably won’t be able to see that once this room is enclosed. This made the spindles on the straightaway 5/8″ apart. On the angled section, I just put a dot at the space between every pair of boards.

There was a gap between the foyer paper and the hallway paper. I cut a scrap of basswood to hide this area and painted it Vintage White to match the trim. I’ll show that board further in this post.

I had to do some math to determine the angle at which the two railing pieces would meet on the balcony. I took a piece of scrap paper (a wine gift catalog…how distracting) and folded it over the edge of the balcony.

I folded the point in half.

I lined up the fold with the end of the railing strip and marked it with a light pencil. I had already cut this piece to length, with a 45° angle at the end by the wall.

I then flipped the paper guide over and marked the railing piece that would join the first.

You can use an Easy Cutter even if the angle you want isn’t one of the presets on the tool. Just line up your blade with your guideline and cut using the tip of the cutter. The tip stays sharper longer because it doesn’t get used as much as the lower part of the blade.

The wall board and two railings are cut and ready for spindles. I will cut the excess from the long straightaway railing piece after I get the spindles in place and the newel post position marked.

The floor board is just over 1/8″ thick. I cut down the wires I had glued into each spindle to sit within this depth.

I taped around my drill bit to make sure I didn’t drill through the ceiling.

As with the stair spindles, I didn’t get the holes drilled in the bottoms of the spindles exactly in the middle, so there was some visual adjustment done for each one.

These are glued in place in addition to having the wire supports. I also installed the remaining baseboard now that I had the vertical finishing trim glued in place.

I cut a piece of railing with 45° cuts at either end to join the newel post at the top of the stairs with that of the balcony. Took me three times to get this to work, and it’s still not the cleanest cut. The wood kept splitting. I also had to shave off a little from bottom of the stair newel post since the staircase extended above the hallway flooring. I needed the two newel post tops to match relative to one another.

I did a dry fit of the railings, then it was time to glue it all in! Once I had it all in place, I touched up the stain on the railing. Success!!!! :D

And, from overhead. The angle join could be cleaner but with the stain touch-up and the low light in the hallway, the minor gap isn’t really noticeable.

Overall, this part of the project was about as difficult as I thought it would be and turned out about as well as I had hoped. Definitely a success all around.

Categories: The Haunted Heritage
December 16, 2012 | 0 comments

Heritage interior staircase, part 6

Completing work on the interior staircase. After getting the new spindles painted and installed on the stairs, I stained the replacement railing from Manchester Woodworks. From there, I procrastinated, even breaking a new kit out of its box. :D I am now prepared to tackle the rest of this project. Truth be told, I can’t put the hallway ceiling on until I do, and that is holding up progress on the attic and finishing the house overall. In simpler terms, I have no choice! :O

I wish I could tell you there was a magical formula I used to get this railing on. I was just winging it with some visual measuring and crossed fingers. I have no idea if it is actually straight, but it looks it, so I suppose that is all that matters. Here’s what I did.

I used the back of my Micro-Mark gluing jig to hold the stair assembly in place. I bent all of the spindles to make them as even as possible (they have wires in the bottom that were glued into each stair). I dry fitted the railing onto the spindles to determine where the railing would hit the front newel post. I also measured where the top newel post would hit the railing and snipped the end.

I marked where the spindles hit the railing with masking tape strips.

I added a drop of tacky glue and super glue gel behind each piece of tape.

I placed the railing onto the spindles while the stairs were still on the jig but immediately lifted the assembly off the jig and adjusted the railing quickly before the glue set.

The stair assembly fits so snugly that I didn’t bother with glue along the wall. I did glue the foyer newel post to the floor and the railing.

It worked!!! :D

I was able to then add the final baseboard trim and crown molding behind the staircase. I also added a baseboard heat register (my bash of a tutorial by Kris at 1 Inch Minis).

Next up, the upper hallway balcony railing.

Categories: The Haunted Heritage
December 15, 2012 | 0 comments

Heritage – bedroom stairs

As you may recall, I raised the ceiling in the parlor on the first floor to accommodate the new narrow staircase but left the kitchen the original lower height so I wouldn’t have to alter the swinging windows of the upper floor. This means the hallway floor is higher than the bedroom floor. My childhood home had a door that opened to reveal the bottoms of a staircase, and I’ve seen this in other old house. I’ve also seen a set of two to three steps leading up a wall to a door. So, I figured this was the way to go for the Heritage.

When Lyssa and I went to the Art Institute during her visit this past October, we naturally saw the Thorne Miniature Rooms first. In one of the fine bedrooms, there was just such a setup. :] I already had a vague image in my mind, but this helped solidify the idea.

I like how the top step is even with the door, as though it were a continuation of the floor on the other side. This makes sense to me, so that one doesn’t open the door and immediately fall down a drop off.

I didn’t need to make up that much height between the floor and the bottom of the door, so I used pieces of foam core board to build two steps. I chose this material mainly because I had scraps and it is easy to cut. I cut two pieces 2 3/4″ L x 1 1/4″ W, and two pieces 2 3/4″ L x 1/2″ W. It wasn’t quite high enough, so I add a shim of 1/16″ thick balsa.

I then added risers from 1/16″ thick basswood.

I cut treads from 1/16″ thick basswood but didn’t glue them to the assembly since I wanted to stain them to match the floor.

I cut side pieces from 1/16″ thick basswood that will enclose the entire unit.

I stained the treads Minwax English Chestnut and painted the remaining pieces Vintage White by Folk Art to match the trim throughout the house. I was impatient for the stain to dry, so I’ve assembled the stairs for a quick photo shoot. No more floating door. :D

When installed permanently, the door will open into the bedroom, but the photos look better with the finished frame showing. The door is also in need of final finishing.

Categories: The Haunted Heritage
December 13, 2012 | 0 comments

Heritage – bedroom wallpaper, part 4

Completing work on the bedroom wallpaper. The wallpaper pieces had to be glued in place in a particular order for the tabs to work. I started with the two side triangle pieces and then added the pieces for the left side angled wall and the front window wall.

Next, the right side angled wall. The darkness of the paper made it hard to work with but it also helped mask any issues with the fit. As you can see, the outer wall is rather rough in texture. I didn’t smooth it because any modest bumps that show under the paper should work in my favor for an old house and it’s not as rough as it looks in the photo.  :]

I had to wire the two bedside lamps and the vanity lamp before I could proceed. I used my usual faux outlet technique for the wiring: a bead for the plug and a handmade wooden outlet to disguise where the wire enters the wall. I had made the wiring channels previously.

I used masking tape to keep the wires in their respective channels and then painted it black.

Since there was a lot of work left to be done in and around this room, I encased the lights in protective wraps.

The bedside lamps were both plugged into the same outlet, which will be behind the headboard, but I didn’t wire them to work as a set. I thought it would be nice to take photos with only one or the other lit.

The pattern didn’t end up matching on the outer wall where it was pieced, but it doesn’t bother me enough to cut a new piece from the reserve sheet. Once the ceiling, baseboard and furnishings are in the room, I doubt it will even be noticeable.

I used tape to suspend the wrapped lights and glued the flooring in place.

The interior window trim and door aren’t glued in place just yet, but we’re getting there! (Yes, I plan to address the floating door.)

I love these lamps! :D

Categories: The Haunted Heritage
December 12, 2012 | 0 comments

Heritage – bedroom wallpaper, part 3

Continuing work on the bedroom wallpaper. With the patterned paper copies ready to serve as templates, I started cutting the actual scrapbook paper – Out of Time by Recollections. I matched the pattern so the final pieces were exactly like the templates. (If I were to do this again, I would have mounted the final paper to an acid free backing paper to build up the thickness for durability.)

I cut all pieces before starting to glue them in place.

Unlike solid cardstock papers, printed papers often have a white paper core. When you score along the paper to make a crisp edge, the white core can show. As expected, the scored lines showed readily since the paper is black printed on white paper and any exposed core showed as a white line.

I ran a grey marker along the scored creases and exposed edges to mask these white lines. Here was my test scrap, used to find which of the various markers I had would be the best color match.

The front window wall piece required some trimming. I used a light colored pencil to mark the inside lines of the interior trim.

I cut outside these lines.

I checked the fit with the trim – no wallpaper showing. :]

I also had to finish the interior portion of the diecut openings that would show through. They aren’t the cleanest, but they are workable enough for me. I can get away with sloppy chipped paint since this is an old house. Note to April (or anyone else who is building a Heritage) – had I wanted this to be a more pristine house, I would have finished these before assembly. It was hard to work with them upright.

Continued here.

Categories: The Haunted Heritage
December 11, 2012 | 0 comments