Contrary to popular belief, we have been getting some DIY finished round these parts.  It’s just been difficult actually getting the pictures uploaded and posted on blog.  Ya know how life is.

At the end of this week, Rick’s family are coming for a visit.  They’re driving about 18 hours from Oklahoma to see us – it’s been about 4 years since we’ve seen them so it will be really nice to catch up.  His folks are bringing his five year old niece, Keegan (pictured here with her 18 month old cousin, Alyssa)…

So the fact that we haven’t got any railing on our main stairs is a bit of a problem. A safety hazard, to say the least. So with a definite deadline to meet, we’ve been spurred on to get the stairs finally finished.  After all, we’ve only been living without rails since last summer . You can track our progress here: stair sanding, new library header, the tread problem and finally, stair staining.

First up?  Before we can install any spindles and railing, we have to solve the base plate issue (read about that here). Rick has been working hard building custom landing plates. Custom because DIY stores don’t carry landing plates in the dimensions we need – 16 ft long by 10 inches wide, plus a little rounded overhang to make it all look pretty.  See exhibit A.

So we glued 1 x 10 to a 1 x 1, and routered then edge to create a bull-nosed finished (see Exhibits B, C and D). A little bit of sanding and screwing and we now have custom landing plates. Voila!

See those brown swirls on the edge of the steps?  We removed the wooden decorative spirals that were stuck there.  Nothing wrong with ‘em, just not our style.  So, those swirls will eventually be painted over for a more seamless look.

Next up? Drilling the holes for the spindles and staining the rest of the plates.  Deets coming soon – stay tuned!