Ideas from Ed: Getting Railed (Volume 9, Issue 3)

Just a few blocks from where I live is another of New Castle’s (PA) 100-year-old historic and beautiful homes.  The owner told me that the handrail leading down to the basement area is only on one side of the steps, and doesn’t even run their full length.  She wanted a second railing installed on the wall side the full way up and down.  No problem!  However, she also wanted it to look like the existing one, even though that one has a lot of wear from countless handgrips over the years.

I took a few pictures, some measurements, and made a drawing of the important details.  The quality of these photos isn’t good, but you’ll see that the quirky things are the dimensions of the wood and the way the handrail support is attached to the upright posts.

As with some of my other projects, it’s a challenge when I build away from the project site, hoping it will all somehow fit in place.  Believe it or not, I planned to build this handrail at my home and hand-carry it to the house!

Thank goodness the homeowner said that using 2x4 material for the main construction would suffice.  (Modern 2x4s are 1.5” x 3.5” actual size.)  The widths I measured (3 5/8” and 3 7/8”) aren’t too far from the 2x4 width, but the thickness of 1 1/8” meant that I’d need to reduce the new wood to that thickness.  Small pieces like the “uprights” could be run through my thickness planer, but running 12’ long boards through would require an open space of over 25’, which I simply don’t have.  I opted to buy one 8’ 2x4 and two 12’ 2x4s.  I trimmed their width down by cutting the wide way just over halfway through each piece, then flipping them over and cutting the other side.  Here’s an upright cut to a 1 1/8” width next to an original 2x4.  I used an accessory support roller about 5’ past the saw when working the long piece to keep it under control.

I ripped the top piece to the needed 2” width.  It’s very difficult these days to find long wood that’s actually straight, and some looks straight but curves or bows once trimmed.  That handrail piece was no exception.  I rotated that piece and the one below to the best orientation I could find so that the right curve of one could offset the left curve of another.  I fastened them together using 16-gauge power-driven finishing nails about every 6”, after spreading adhesive on their mating surfaces. The result was a railing that was acceptably straight.  I used a rounding-over bit in my router to mimic the eased edges of the original handrail.

I used a simple gauge to determine the steepness of the steps and to mark and notch the bottom end of the rail support board.

I attached the supports in place with construction adhesive followed by three 3 ½” screws.  I drove the screws into pockets pre-drilled with a 3/8” bit and I glued and hammered pieces of 3/8” dowel into the holes to cover the screw heads.  I used the ¼” thick slices obtained from cutting the 2x4s to width to make glued/nailed gussets on the back side of each joint.

With no real room between the unrailed stringer and the wall, the vertical supports would need to be lag-screwed to the inside face of the stringers.  That would at least give just a bit of room for fingers to successfully grip the rail.  The new unit would also need to be secured to the brick wall for strength.  The stair stringers are also of 1 1/8” thickness, so I cut a spacer, trimmed it to the 1 1/8” thickness, and cut a groove down the center.  In that groove, I planned to use Tapcon screws threaded into the bricks to hold the spacer, and then use wood screws to attach the handrail support to it.  Placing the Tapcons in the groove recessed the head of each screw below surface level, enabling the handrail unit to sit flush against the spacer.  (For those who don’t know, Tapcons are a brand of hardened screw meant to be driven directly into holes drilled into things like brick and concrete.  Tapcons are what I used, but I am in no way endorsing any particular brand or product.)

The homeowner and I briefly discussed things like rail height and construction “to meet code” but obviously the height would need to be the same as the existing rail on the opposite side.  I caused myself a lot of angst by only measuring the height above the front edge of the bottom step.  The problem is that I wanted the middle and upper supports to land more toward the middle or rear of their treads rather than the front edge like the bottom one.  In other words, the middle and upper supports would need to be longer than the bottom one because of the 40-degree above horizontal slope of the stairway.  I somewhat solved that problem by leaving the upper supports extra long so final cutting to height could happen in a test-fitting, prior to any final painting.  Here is the unit rough-assembled in my backyard:

The homeowner wanted to paint the handrail herself before I bolted it in place, but I gave it a prep coat of gray primer.

Per my plan, I drove my Honda CRV to her house, loaded with tools.  I walked back home, picked up the handrail from my garage, and hand-carried it to her home!  (I don’t know if anyone saw me, but that surely would have been a sight!)  She had a basement access through a set of Bilco doors, and enough room in the basement for me to maneuver the assembled piece through several test fittings.  I anticipated a lot of trimming to get it to fit well, and I wasn’t disappointed!  Once I was satisfied with the placement, I left the railing so that she could paint it.

Here it is several days later, after she had applied 2 coats of paint to each side.

Now it was down to the actual installation!  I drilled 5/16” holes through the handrail supports, but used a 3/16” bit to drill just a little into the stringers themselves.  That way, the lag screws I was using weren’t so much biting into the supports, but rather slipping through them and pulling things tight against the stringers.  I used 5/16” x 2 ¼” lag screws and a flat washer, so the total length was just a hair less than the total thickness of the support/stringer combination.

I used #12x2” wood screws to attach the handrail subframe to the backing block made earlier.

When all was done, the final product did look like it was original and not added-on, and felt very sturdy and strong.  The homeowner was happy with how it turned out, and so was I!

I hope all your projects go well.  Thanks for reading, and happy restoring!

Ed

If you’d like to download a PDF of this “Ideas” column, click here:

Ideas from Ed 2026_March_getting_railed.pdf

Download PDF • 1.78MB