No more dangling on the hairy edge

Since we demolished much of the half-wall in April, navigating our staircase meant descending into a hole in the floor—and traversing our great room meant avoiding said hole.

This resulted in moments of heart pounding excitement. Such as when we maneuvered scaffolding over the pit in order to reach the peak for painting. Or carrying 16 foot long pieces of trim into the house and almost taking one step too far back when trying to place the bouncy boards on the great room floor.

But all that was to change on Friday. At last, we were ready for Railco Metalcraft to install our railings. They did careful measurements and we approved their detailed shop drawings for railings going on both sides of our steps from the deck to the back yard, down the side of the house where Wasko poured concrete steps, from the top floor to the landing, from the landing to the walk-out basement and even for the three steps up to the pending second bathroom.

Then my office phone rang at 10:45 a.m. It was Robert from Railco, who was having a problem with the install. The poplar surround changed the dimensions of the hole in the floor. The railing no longer had proper knuckle clearance to pass inspection. In a gentle voice, Robert explained that “they” did this, that and the other thing wrong.

I admitted, there was no “they.” It was us. We did it wrong. We approved the drawings and never looked at them again. We did the surround in order to hide the bad drywall, without considering the way this element would (or would not) tie in with the railings.

His tone softened further, but I could imagine him thinking, “Expletive! Now I have to come back and finished the job! Expletive do-it-yourselfers!”

We talked through the project; I thought Matt and I could handle it. So I told Robert to install everything he could and leave the rest for us to figure out. He gave me his mobile phone number and said he was just a call away if we ran into trouble. Matt and I conferred and agreed with this course of action.

What did we do this weekend? We pulled the trim off of the left side of the surround, purchased a new circular saw and used it to cut the poplar as close to the wavy wall as we could and I used an orbital sander to try to create a subtle groove to ensure there would be code-required knuckle room. We also ripped hardboard and painted it white as a low-profile trim substitute.

The railing overshot our surround, and this forced us to figure out how we’d finish the front of the stairs. Poplar. It had been the obvious answer all along, but our rush to complete the 18 treads blinded us to thinking about the project holistically.

All we had left was one board of the appropriate length, but with a crown that hadn’t been treated royally by the mill. It took me more than three hours of sanding to make it usable. (Meanwhile, Matt painted trim.) Yes, this was a far superior option to going back to Home Depot. Their sound system—controlled by Atlanta headquarters—crackles in a way more irritating than the endless whir of an electric sander and their peopled checkout lines never seem to move forward.

So undoing and redoing was all we accomplished this weekend, but we met our objective. The entire surround is poplar, and it looks the way it should. All the silver railings are in place and beautiful. And I no longer have to worry about dangling on the hairy edge. The great room now has fall protection.