Stair Railing, Pt. 2

I started off wanting to install a railing down the stairs from the second floor to the first, but was delayed slightly by needing to rebuild a section of upstairs railing before I could start to piece together the actual stair rail. With that now complete, I spent some time crafting the railing.

First off I needed to pencil  the height of the completed rail on the wall and then mount the handrail brakets that the railing will sit on when installed. We purchased some nice vintage reproduction brackets from Lee Valley.

One of the rail brackets. I find them really beautiful, but as is the lot of a rail bracket, it is mostly hidden from view behind the railing itself

With the brackets installed I then built up the rail pieces themselves. I had planned to continue the railing detail around the opening on the second floor down, but Nancy said it was way too big.  I then  sized the whole assembly down and it is much better now--easier to grasp and a gentler profile all around.

The junction of the two runs of rail where they meet at the landing

This is where the (newly extended) section of stair opening railing meets the rail that goes downstairs. I'm still not sure how these two are going to connect

The intersections where the railing sections meet are the challenging part since they are coming in at an angle and then making a turn or (in the case where the upstairs railing meets the stair rail) turning, dropping, and then turning again.  I knew the only way I'd be able to work this out was to build everything long and then make fitting decisions where I could actually see the relationships.

That is the next step: work out the connections between the two runs of rail and then sort out how I want to finish it where it enters out into the living room on the first floor. Should it be simple and unadorned and just end at the opening? End in a decorative curl atop a post? Hmm... I enjoy visualizing this kind of thing.

Stair Railing

Nice morning light coming in on the section of upstairs railing I'm rebuilding

Its become apparent to me that we need a railing for the stairway between the first and second floors. Any time kids or older folks are visiting I notice the subtle search for support as someone goes up or down the stairs. We are plannng to have a full house here at the end of the year with both young and old alike, so I'm working to get a railing in place beforehand.

This is a somewhat complex project for a couple of reasons. Railings often look simple because they seem to seamlessly wind down the stairway passage, but in fact there are sometimes odd drops and levels that require some creative woodworking and joinery.

The newly rebuilt section of railing that now extends about 6 or 7 inches further along the stair opening. The circle indicates where the post used to be

Additionally, joining the rail to the existing banister that runs along the stair opening on the second floor has required rebuilding a section of the upstairs banister. I resisted making this effort at first since it meant doing some careful deconstruction, but once I committed myself to going that direction it became clear that the project will be much more satisfactory in the end.

As you can see in the photo above, the original banister did not quite reach to the end of the stair opening, as indicated by the light colored circle where the post used to be. I considered various ways that I might extend the existing structure, but in the end decided that the best way to "stretch it" was to rebuild the whole section.  A really nice bonus to result from making this decision was the opportunity to do a better job positioning the vertical wooden posts that sit in groups of three along the span of the railing. When I built the section the first time I didn't really work out a satisfying positioning between the two metal posts and now I have the opportunity to correct that. You may not be able to see it too well in the photo below, but each grouping of three wooden posts now sit nicely centered in the run. It used to be off kilter and it bugged me.

New section of upstairs railing in place with newly positioned vertical posts

With the section of railing rebuilt and extended, now I can get on with my original goal to instal the railing down to the first floor.

Bathroom Vanity

The hinged mirror door closed. Note the "hanging" tilt to the mirror

Note the outlet in the right-hand side of the cabinet. The electrical cords run down and under the removeable wooden shelf and up to the chargers, keeping things neat.

Early on in the project as I was edging out the sheetrock opening

We were away on vacation for a couple of weeks and a project I had started before we left only got finished yesterday, namely the mirror vanity in the second floor bathroom.

We had sheetrocked over this area and planned to come back at some point and build a vanity in the wall cavity with an openable mirror mounted on the opening.

For a couple of months we had this great old mirror hanging there and I enjoyed how the mirror hung slightly off the wall at an angle. When I began this little project I wanted to maintain the look of a hanging mirror, rather then have it lay perfectly flat against the wall. This took some tricky hinge work to make happen, but it came together well and achieved the look I was going for. Nancy and I picked this mirror up off the street in North Adams, Massachusetts at least 10 years ago and have had it hanging around since. With a little paint and clean-up it's got a nice stately feel.

A second aspect of this little project was wiring in a receptacle in the cabinet that we could plug our re-chargeable toothbrushes into, rather then having them messily draped out in the room. I built a little raised shelf so the wires of the chargers run down out of the outlet and under the shelf with just a little wire coming up to the charger. This keeps the cabinet free of the wires as well. I'm pleased with how its all come together.

Dying Camera

This is the detail overhead when you come down the stairs to the first floor

A slightly better photo of the new shelves in the kitchen

I managed to coax the lens out on our dying camera today to take some semi-okay quality photos. At least they are better then the grainy photos the iPod takes when the light is low.

I finished a little playful detail over the stair of steam-bent maple that forms sort of a swoop from the second floor down to the first. Quality-wise it is a little rough, but I like the effect. I may re-do it sometime.

Besides that I got a bunch of the last pieces of trim poly-ed and I'll be throwing some quills in those tomorrow and that'll be that for trim.

More floor

This is a really cool wedge system to push the flooring planks together as you are installing them to achieve a tight fit

Nancy and I spent a long day yesterday and made a lot of progress on the second floor. We've calculated that it takes, on average, about an hour per course of flooring to put down. This includes rearranging, making special cuts, backing up when necessary, etc... We figure we're about two-thirds of the way done on the second floor and expect to finish it this weekend.

At the end of the day we each took a bath and then nodded off just after midnight.

Happy New Years!

Lights, camera... LIGHTS!

Felton rendered this ugly tangle into an elegant flow channeled into the electrical panel

The light in the root cellar. This is particularly satisfying to have working because it is otherwise super dark. Now we don't have to mess with headlamps to find what we're looking for

Lights at the peak of the second floor ceiling

On Friday, Felton did the final piece of the house electrical wiring project by wiring in all the various circuits to the electrical panel. It was a bunch of work and he worked longer then his usual afternoon session in order to complete the work he had started. With great fanfare he put the coverplate back on the panel and then proceeded to flip the breakers one by one.

With this, most of the light switches and outlets throughout the house are now live, including the smoke/carbon monoxide sensor system which must be wired in by code. In a couple of cases the breakers wouldn't flip, so Felton has to come back and trace the problem, but hopefully that won't present any major obstacles.

The week in review

So, Joe was here this week and provided both great work but also a sense that we're getting somewhere with this whole project. I've been doing my thing for a while and it helps to have Joe in on the effort. We made headway.

Joe was working on the second floor, building the headwall that defines where our bed will be and then the closet. So far we like the arrangement and think we'll stick with it.

I've been tying up the loose ends with the water supply. At the point, with one minor exception, all the water lines to all our plumbing fixtures are in. The fun part of this is pressure testing the system. This is sort of like pumping up a bike tire except that the inner tube in this case is all of the water lines running through the house. Like a bike tube, you hook up a air pump and pump up the system to a given level and then look to see if the gauge stays constant. If it does not, there is a leak and you need to go around a dab each fitting connection with some soap-like stuff and see if it bubbles.

We found a leaky connection right off the bat because I'd forgotten to crimp one of the fittings. I crimped it and presto, the system held air. After a couple of hours I went to check again and the pressure had dropped from about 15 psi to 10 or so. I then went around doing the bubble check and eventually found a small leak near the pressure gauge. I re-installed it, checked again and found no bubbles. I re-pressurized the system and will take another look in the morning. This is cool stuff. If the system holds air, it'll hold water.

The Second Floor

A drawing of the second floor plan. (Click on the image for an enlarged view)

Our friend Mary recently wrote asking about the second floor and what our plans are.

It was an astute question because the truth is we haven't ever really nailed down our plan for the second floor. At some point way back we decided we could sort it out later. Well, later is now, and we are trying out different ideas.

We've actually been sleeping in the house since the end of April and so have had an opportunity to place our futon in various locations to see how it feels. We started off with the bed in the upper left-hand corner of the main room. That had sort of dark light and no distinct views. It felt sort of just shuttled out of the way. Mary's question got me thinking that we needed to pay a little more attention to this area of the house and so I started playing around in Sketch-Up and soon found myself placing the bed lined up to look west out the double windows. It looked good in the drawing, so I slid the bed over and tried it out. Lo and behold, it felt good.

The issue with this spot is that it is very near the current entrance to the bathroom, so in order to make way for passage to the bathroom we slid the bed a bit to the left and now are going to try that arrangement. I'd rather the bed be lined up nicely with the double windows, but something has to give.

The other issue involved here is guests and the guest room. We'd like to make it so that guests can come up the stairs and pass by our sleeping area without the feeling like they are completely walking through our room. The arrangement as shown above doesn't quite do that, but we are going to dwell on it a bit and see what thought come up.

More on all of this later...

Sleepless

Last night I didn't fall asleep right away. While I was laying there I was thinking a bit about the configuration of the bathroom on the second floor with washing machine right outside the door.

Here is an image that roughly shows where the washing machine is in relationship to the door. Although this sort of packs the washing machine away, it leaves almost no room for storage around it.

This configuration wasn't sitting quite right with me and as I stewed it over it came to me that we should move the door around the corner to take up the little square of floor over the stairway.

When I woke up this morning I talked it over with Nance and then went out to see if this would work.

In order to make it happen I had to essentially move the end wall of the bathroom out another foot (towards the right in the photo above) to make the landing over the stairway wide enough to accommodate the width of a door going into the bathroom. This in turn pushes the washing machine out into the room a little more and creates some extra space in the bathroom that isn't necessary, but isn't a problem either.

So, after looking it over with Nancy, I decided to go for it and by the end of the day had reworked the space. With this arrangement, I'll build a closet along the end of the bathroom that will enclose the washer and provide room for a dryer as well, should we ever want one, and linen storage. Having the door located here also makes good use of that little patch of land over the stairway. There'll be a little half wall along the rim of the stairwell in short order.

Nance suggested making upper section of where the old door was be a pass-through linen storage area from the closet to the bathroom.

Running the wire

Felton, pointing me in the right direction

Where the load center (circuit breaker box) will be located in the basement

Some wiring in place

The to-do list

After a look around and coming up with "what's next" yesterday with my stepfather Felton, who is a licenced electrician, I started off on the electrical work today. I ran the wiring from the kitchen receptacles and appliances down to the "load center"--formerly known as the circuit breaker box. Its pretty basic, but this is the easy stuff. Its the actual wiring the switches, outlets and fixtures that comes later that baffles me.

I worked my way around most of the first floor today and will finish it off tomorrow. That leaves the second floor for early next week. Today I also boiled down the plans for the stairs to the basement.

Since I'm somewhat dependent on the help and timing of others, I made a list of things that I'll do while keeping the plumbing and electric rolling. There's plenty to do, but it helps to have it laid out in a list in front of me.

Stairs: Check

Finished up the stairs to the second floor. The dimensions on stairs need to be exact and things came in just right, so I feel happy with the effort. The human body senses the height of stairs and can stumble when there are even very small variations, so things had to be right on.

We made a point of keeping the rise & run to dimensions that would allow a semi-elegant feel to going up and down the stairs and I'd say they feel great; just what we were hoping for. The trade off for designing the stair like this is that they cover more real estate within the house, but I think it was a good direction to go in. They feel easy to go up and down.

Joe introduced me to impact drivers, which are basically screw guns with a very powerful ratcheting hammer built in that makes them able to drive screws and bolts in effortlessly. My old screw gun batteries had died in the mean time, so today I went out and purchased a combo kit of impact driver and screw gun. Handy and top notch.

Landing to second

Today I installed the temporary treads up to the landing and then put plywood down on the landing itself. I then began work on the second set of stairs going from the landing to the second floor. Its working out well and I should have the stairs wrapped up sometime tomorrow. Fun stuff.

From there I'll start running electrical wire from the boxes I've installed back to the to-be-installed breaker box.

Climbing the stairway...

Today I spent the day getting to work on the stairs. I've held off for a long time because I wanted some time to think about what they would look like. At this point I want have a few projects going because I need to be able to switch around in case I get held up with any one effort.

I started off the day close to the woodstove doing some calculating and drawing. I'd like to get the stairs right first time around, so it pays to take the time and be careful.

There will be a landing a little over halfway up the stairs, so once I'd determined the height of the platform, I set about building it. That pretty much took the rest of the day, but before I quit I removed the temporary plywood flooring over the opening, which was very exciting. We get to see and feel what this is going to be like in the house, and I have to report that its good.

One thing I've sort of known for a while but confirmed today is that I'll have to lower the window at the landing. Since I knew it was coming, I'm not bummed, but it'll be some work.

All in all a good day's work. Maybe some actual stairs tomorrow.

Interior walls

The first floor interior walls show (from l. to r.) the bathroom, the closet, and the mudroom. There is a door from the mudroom that will allow access into the closet. The stairs to the second floor will eventually be located to the left of the bathroom.

This photo shows the closet. There will be a built-in shelving unit that will fill the space opening towards the camera. We currently have a shelf of similar dimensions in the yurt and it works well for us.

This is the upstairs bathroom. The end wall with the door was not yet completed when I took the photo.

Last week was a short work week because we went to Boston on Thursday. Mostly I worked on building the interior walls on the first and second floors. It went pretty smoothly.

I was apprehensive that building in the walls would somehow diminish the experience of the first floor; that it would suddenly feel small and cramped and chopped up, but to my relief it actually still feels spacious and open.

Having these walls in place allows me to start laying out the electrical boxes; the switches, the outlets and the mounted lights, which is what I started working on today.

Changes and fixes

This photo shows the original framing removed from over the large living
room windows. The open space was soon filled with a header and new framing

The "real" post that replaces the temporary
one we'd had in place for a few months

This photo shows the framing for a larger window which
will replace the small one currently installed

Over the last week or so, Joe and I have continued building in the secondary walls throughout the house. The work has gone smoothly and as fast or faster then I might have imagined. Usually it is the other way around.

Along the way we've made some fixes and changes as needed. In looking at a reference book I've been using, I noticed a qualifier to something which I hadn't questioned. If you recall, there are no headers over the windows located on the gable-end walls because they are not carrying any load other then the weight of the walls themselves. Well, it turns out that this works just fine, but IF the window or door in question is over 4 feet wide, there should be a header.

D'oh!

I don't think this would have been a big deal, but I was glad to have seen this note when I did because it was easy for us to add headers to the two windows to which this criteria applied.

We installed the permanent post that replaces the temporary one which has been in place since the fall. It's a nice looking post. We might do more decorative work to it at some point, but for now it's just going to do it's job of holding up the second floor at the turn of the stairwell.

Another change was to the window on the second floor. Nancy and I decided on the size and configuration of one particular set of window in haste and once they arrived and we installed them we decided that we'd arrived at something a little too small. So, Joe and I framed out an opening for a larger window which we'll install once I chase down the window company and get our new one on order. It'll be a much more pleasant view and light for the second floor once the new window is in place. It looks out over the garden and we look forward to coffee and tea looking out on fruits of our gardening work.

Roof roof roof

We spent the better part of last week doing all the trim/rough sawn edge work around the perimeter of the whole roof. This includes the drip edge, the roof trim, the ice and water shield and the visible rough sawn overhang sheathing. This is labor intensive and, once done, sets us up to install the plywood over the main part of the house and run right up the roof in short order.
This morning we polished off the very last of the pre-plywood work and then installed a few rafter ties. The rafter ties serve two purposes: mated to the rafters they complete the triangle that becomes the structural unit of the roof, tying the rafters together so they resist spreading from the downward force of gravity; their other purpose is to create a lowered ceiling effect on the second floor while still providing an open view up to the cathedral ceiling. There will be rafter ties on each set of rafters all the way down, so they will act in effect like a loft floor above the second floor. The ties need to be placed within the lower third of the length of the rafter which puts them about 7 feet above the floor.

I am particularly excited about the creative possibilities created by this element of the house design. We can hang things from them, create a loft on top of them, put lights in, on, or around them--whatever we like. They are going to give the second floor a playful and spacious quality that feels great to me. We only installed a few of them today. Once we've got the plywood up on the roof we'll put the rest up.


The weather today was an astounding 65 degrees. It was the first day in weeks that we actually felt hot. I kept joking with Joe that it was too much for me to take and that I thought we'd have to quit early. Given the fact that we are working up high and you have a lot to manage at the same time, its a blessing to not be fighting the cold at the same time.

East Gable Wall-The last

We've been seeing great flocks of geese flying south. (Click on the first photo and you'll see the line of them across the sky).

Since the last post, we raised the kneewall along the west edge of the second floor (seen in the last photo above). Today we put up the last of the three gable walls (over the kitchen on the second floor), which is the last exterior wall of any serious magnatude; we have partial kneewalls to fill in once the roof framing take shape, but that'll be quick fill-in stuff. So, this means we are effectively onto building the roof, and to that end we put up a pair of rafters at the end of the day on the lower roof over the kitchen. It feels like we're turning a corner where we'll soon be done with all the framing and moving onto the next phase, which will be the trim, siding, windows and doors--but we're not there yet. The roof is it's own project and will offer some interesting challenges to make the roof framing come together correctly. Stay tuned.