Needed a Stair Rail, so I built one!

[burly]

Hey all,

We needed a way to put up a baby gate on our stairs but our house did not come with a railing! The reason being that since it is an old cape cod, it would be quite difficult to put one in and still be able to move furniture upstairs!

So, I designed a removable stair railing and newel post!  There's 2 lag bolts that hold the newel post in and 1 lag bolt in the hand rail on the ceiling and post... So, when the time comes, 4 bolts and the whole railing can be moved!

I did a poor job of keeping track of the costs for this but it was somewhere around $500 for the materials!

The only thing remaining is to figure out what type of newel post cap I want or can make.

Also, what do you guys think, should I sand the paint off the post and stain that too?

[jenstill]

Wow, way to go! This looks great, is much safer for everyone (especially baby!), and still convenient. What an ingenious solution with the lag bolts. As far as aesthetics of paint vs. stain, in my opinion, you could either sand the paint off of the post and stain it, or paint the top part of the railing to match the post; I believe either would look good, so whichever you prefer.

[Daleth]

That looks great! Colorwise, what about leaving the post as-is and making the cap match the unpainted railing?

[willn]

Nice job! Looks great and ingenious to have it be removable.

I wouldn't think it would've passed final inspection without a railing.  It's nice that it is easy to remove as it does look like a cramped space for moving furniture, etc.