we built a banister

I am tired so I'll just spell it out for you in photos.  Less talk, more pictures.

The second time I fell in love with this house (first being the online info, second being the first time we saw it right before we went under contract...) I thought, "That daggone wall has got to go!!"  I mean, clearly it has no place here.  Hmmph.  The wall came down right when we took down our Christmas tree.  Weird, we had no idea it had grown into the wall...

 

it changed this stairwell soooo much!

Now it might look like Nick is doing all the work, but that's only because I am process-photo crazy.
Knox couldn't let him have all the fun either...

helping get some nails out of what's soon to be the newel post

got my hand saw...

got my jigsaw...

got my sister to help...

We used a piece of our baseboard to finish the top plane, and cut the larger studs off to be the newel post.  We're trimming it out in other pieces of leftover trim from our board and batten walls.  So far we're still pretty positive it wasn't load-bearing.  Also, the stairs stayed like this for far too many weeks.  We all survived the Staircase of Doom!

we doweled the bottoms of the balusters and nailed at the top angle.  Plenty of glue was involved so these suckas aren't moving!

we used this jig to make sure our angles were perfect-ish... It's got a stem that fits into the chuck of your drill.  So easy even a husband can do it ;)

 He spent a lot of time laying this out after we figured out center-to-center of the posts, and then figured the angle and spacing between.  I don't love math so this was his job.  Knox knew his hammer wouldn't help so he even stayed out of it.

Knox took this picture!

 Roo needed a break from all of our nonsense...

But we forged ahead!

If you're about to even THINK that these balusters aren't spaced evenly, stop it right now.  It's the perspective, got it?  They're super freaking even!!  Also my living room is NOT pulled together so judge easy on me.  Glad we talked.

And now our kids can dazedly ascend to our room in the middle of the night without the imminent danger of sleepwalking off of an open staircase.  

We have to install three more balusters but we figured feeding the kids dinner was slightly more important.  THIS time.  We'll do some staining and painting when they're all in.  We'll install the wainscoting under the stairs and up the wall as well, AND we'll even finish off the rises of the stairs! Then we'll try to get the crown molding done in there at some point... And in the meantime hopefully someone will have anonymously left a huge cowhide rug on my porch to really finish off the room.  Perhaps a trip to the storage unit to reclaim our art and photos and such is not such a preposterous idea either.  Hopefully once these steps have been taken I will be able to dazzle you with the finished product!

Happy with it so far, soooo glad we TKO'd that wall!  And now, from our new banister to yours, I good you bid evening.