After just a short 14 months, the bannister and railing project is complete
And you know what, you could justifiably call it a full year and a half from start to finish on this project.
Because I started stripping the handrail during Thanksgiving 2010 when our family was here after a friend loaned me his heat gun and I was curious to see how it would work and wanted to see if the railing would strip. And I have zero patience. Other than the walls, that was probably my first experience stripping paint. In just a few minutes, I had the easiest part of the handrail stripped and after some sanding. That was easy, I thought! Oh wait, the rest of it isn’t flat and it’s filled with nooks and crannies. So it mostly stayed looking like this until April 2011.
In April 2011, I started stripping the bannister while Rachel was out of town for a work trip. I made a bit more progress and got one side of the handrail mostly stripped, as well as almost all of the bannister itself. I didn’t get all the stain and varnish off, though, so it looked half stained (or half stripped, depending on your point of view, I guess) for the last 14 months, which drove Rachel crazy. But sadly, we got used to it.
The second photo below is how it’s looked every day since last April.
Finishing this project has been on my must-do pre-baby list for a few months, though I’d been dreading it. Tedious, mind-numbing work that would take me hours upon hours — about two full weekends working nonstop Saturday and Sunday, which also meant a solid week or two of dust and mess in the house.
That dusty mess is the other reason we wanted to get this done before the baby gets here. It generates a lot of dust and the paint likely has lead in it and it’s best to get it all over with and cleaned up and everything wiped down before there are tiny lungs in the house.
So as I mentioned earlier this week, I called the guy who refinished my floors to come out and finish what I started and get the entire thing stripped down and refinished. They came on Monday and basically knocked out all of the sanding in one day, with four guys working for about 9 hours. Here’s how things looked during the day on Monday. Check out the pile of dust and paint shavings in the corner and on the stairs.
They got the stain on by the end of the day on Monday and came back Tuesday to touch up a few places and put on two coats of water-based polyurethane in a satin finish. Water-based poly works well for a surface like this that’s not going to see very high traffic and won’t wear away. (Most people use oil-based on floors.) We opted to use the same stain color (Minwax Provincial) as we did on the stairs and downstairs floors in an attempt to match the color. It didn’t match up exactly, mostly due to the different types of wood, but I opted to keep the darker color — it’s a nice contrast with the floor and will look really good with white spindles once I paint those, hopefully this weekend.
I think the newel post turned out to be hickory or cedar, which made the stain difficult to even out. I like how it turned out with darker spots in places. And the railing itself is mahogany, based on the tight little grain pattern and what I know from years of selling acoustic guitars. The spindles are cheap pine, which looks like junk when you stain it, which is ok, because I’ve been planning to paint them white all along. Reminds me of the look of wood against white paint that I like on staircases where the treads are stained and the risers are white. Very classy.
The only thing that didn’t go according to plan is the lower rail below the spindles. You can see that they stripped it as best as they could, but it has two sets of grooves that run the length of it and that were filled with caulk or filler of some kind that made stripping all the way down to bare wood nearly impossible. So that whole bottom rail will be painted white as well, which I think will work out fine. Here’s a closer detail of that area.
The underside of the handrail has the same problem, so the stain goes to the edge of the spindles, and then a space in between every spindle will be painted too. That should barely be noticeable.
So after only a year and a half, our bannister and stairs are the kind of showstopper that we always knew they could be one day. Honestly, this is the project I’ve wanted to have done almost more than anything else. I’m a sucker for unpainted woodwork, and I could totally see the railing paint-free with a nice stain in my head from the moment we first bought the house and started working. Which is probably why I started a project I had no intention of even finishing at the time. Like I just wanted to know that it was possible…
But at long last, it’s all refinished. And once I paint the spindles, it’ll look really sharp.
Here’s the entryway, then and now from about November 2010 to June 2012. Hard to believe that it’s come this far.
Since November 2011 in the entryway, we have: stripped the walls of all paint and wallpaper, taken up the carpet, removed the popcorn covered plaster ceiling and put up new drywall, refinished the floor and stairs, painted the front door red, repainted the dining room light fixture and moved it in here, installed a skylight over the stairs and hung a load of pictures on the stairway wall.
All that’s left now is to install a new smoke detector and do a little moulding and trim work to cover up that little piece on the ceiling that’s actually the bottom edge of the upstairs railing.
Update: I would be remiss if I didn’t give a plug for the great crew who did the work. Neftali Florian refinished all the floors in our house back in November/December 2010 for about half the price of the fancy company with their names on a fleet of trucks, as well as our awful kitchen floors that those same “pros” said were beyond saving. He and his bros knocked this out in two days for a very fair price. Give him a call at 703-843-1289 or neftali.florian@yahoo.com. He does tile, floors, moulding, and pretty much everything you can think of.
It's always good to revisit that awful, awful, awful carpet too. Glad you have this off your mind – that's where things are always the heaviest.
Aughhh! The carpet!
Though seriously, when this got finished and I got the carpet done in the porch and the doors back on last night, I felt a huge release. There are a dozen little things I need to do, but every single big hours-long project is finished at this point. For phase one, anyway.
Projects done. Labor begins. Almost as if it had to happen that way.
Sharp. You make house good looking improve.
almost triggered the spam filter with that one. Comment engine looking for link to personaltransportation dot net or cheapcarinisurance dot com….
And we'll be seeing the nursery before little Miss Monkey Wrench is sleeping in there, right?
Yes, finishing up the last few outstanding things in there that have gone on way too long. I rehung the door and stripped and primed the transom last night so after this weekend it should almost be finished. Just need to repaint some spots, drill out the door to fit the antique door hardware, and then get the jamb fixed (which will happen next week.) And that'll be it!
Or maybe not…
Beautiful results! There's one positive thing about leaving old carpet down during renovations – it makes a great drop cloth!
Did you look into any of the infrared paint removers? We are just about to finish up our first window frame paint stripping experience and it is pretty trying…but the infrared devices are awfully expensive. – Kara
No! I haven't even heard of such a thing! How does it work? Stripping is definitely a (tedious!) process of figuring out what works best for you. I've tried almost everything at this point, and I think I've figured the right mixture of tools that works best for most of my trim and moulding. As good as Peel Away 1 and 7 are, I still find it easier to use a pull scraper, a heat gun, and a couple different moulding scrapers. These two tools are clutch in my paint removal arsenal:
http://astore.amazon.com/ouroldrow-20/detail/B000…
http://astore.amazon.com/ouroldrow-20/detail/B000…
We have the Silent Paint Remover made by Viking. It's not cheap, but it does a good job for large items like windowframes and doors that you can take down and put on a workbench. The size and shape of it make it awkward to use on things like stairway railings or trim that is still in place. I still prefer a traditional heat gun for those situations.
Whoa, I never knew such a thing existed. Fantastic. Just spent 10 minutes poring over their site. Tons of useful things on there.
Here's my best method/materials for stripping long sections of molding and sashes. It produces no lead dust and only a very small amount of chips. I use SoyGel by Franmar. It's reusable about 3 or 4 times (which they don't tell you) but really makes it very economical. I also use polytubes from Uline. I uninstall the millwork (casing, trim, cap moldings, etc.) Remove any nails. Cut polytubes to length to fit millwork. Tie off one end. Insert millwork. Fill with SoyGel. Tie off at other end. Sit over night. Remove millwork from polytube sleeve, squeezing sleeve to hold SoyGel in sleeve. Scrape and rub with finish pad as necessary to remove paint solids. One polytube sleeve treatment is usually enough. Two at most. Wash down with mineral spirits. Sit a couple days to make sure remnant SoyGel dries out. Prime. Reinstall. Paint. Going back to used sleeve full of SoyGel, I insert next piece of millwork. I'll reuse a sleeve 3 or 4 times until the stripper stops being effective.
Same materials, process for sashes, but I tack together a snug box with 2x's, plywood and heavy mil plastic liners. Kind of like a homemade dip tank. Cover bottom with thin layer Soygel. Lay down some thin dowels for the sash to sit on so the stripper is in contact underneath. Lay down the sash. Cover with Soygel. Cover with heavy mil plastic overnight. Scrape, mineral spirit wash, etc. SoyGel also softens the glazing enough that it can be scraped off too.
SoyGel also eats through lineoleum and mastic right down to concrete. Learned that one by accident.
I've heard of that stuff but haven't used it yet. Very helpful instructions! You don't have any pictures out there anywhere do you? For the rooms I've done so far I've avoiding removing the millwork and stripped them in place, but I probably will have to take them down for the stuff I'm doing from here on out since I won't have the luxury of making a dusty mess in a room under construction anymore. It'll have to all be done in the basement or outside, most likely.
Not very good dust containment. No tape at door bottom. No plastic collection sheets. Do some swipe tests for lead. Babies don't eat lead or lick floors, but they do crawl with their hands and then suck their hands and eat with their hands. Best defense: wash baby hands frequently and definitely before meals. My son had elevated lead levels that were fixed with iron supplements (doctors prescription) and being more diligent about washing hands. Lead levels returned to safe levels.
We'll probably test again at some point but we had the door to the nursery taped over all the way around and all the other doors closed. And the door to the kitchen closed and taped around the seams (you can see that one in a pic) and plastic over the entrance to the den sealed all the way around. And then once we finished we swept and mopped about ten times and did a bit of it by hand in all the corners and edges that are hard to get. I'd be surprised if there's still any lead dust anywhere. And as we just have a tiny newborn, we've got quite a few months before we have to worry about a crawling baby at this point — part of the reason I wanted to get it done now rather than later.
This place in Reston rents IR strippers and sells new and used IR strippers: http://www.eco-strip.com/
They do work really well.