Stair Railing Make-Over

...still alive.

Many hugs and thank you's to those who continue to check back to see if we have our life together yet.

Recently I took on a new job, which means back to full-time status.  Ugh.  It also means our "extra" time is that much more valuable, therefore, the project wagon has not been as full lately.

I am here to share a couple fun updates though.  For any of you homeowners out there living in a "barely meeting code" home, like us, you sometimes wonder why it took you so long to fix/secure/replace something pretty sketchy.  Take our stair railing for example.  That thing wiggled and wobbled more than... oh... I'll just stop there.  I was convinced replacing the stair rail would be an easy fix.  For those of you who have replaced a newel post and railing, you probably understand how cray-cray my thoughts were.

Rewinding a bit, a few weeks ago we went to Gold Rush with some friends.  I had a 'Shane Approved' list to go off of, and an old newel post was listed in my top three.  I was expecting to find, oh, I dunno, like a dozen of these suckers?  Apparently, they are hard to come by.  You know that feeling you get when you spot a $10.00 bill on the ground?  Exact same feeling I had when I saw the only newel post in all of Gold Rush staring right back at me.  It was dirty and beautiful.  The dude was charging $45.00 FIRM.  He said he ripped it out of an old farm house in one of the Dakotas.  Price checking new newel posts at home improvement stores, they were more expensive, and not nearly as much girth.

Sold.

It took a few weeks, but we finally started making headway on the railing.  Simple enough to rip out the old railing, and replace it with the new, right?  Wrong.  What I failed to realize is the newel post is actually put in before the flooring, to ensure stability.  Not sure what went wrong hurr... but stability was not it's strong suit.

Plan B.

We ripped out the old railing system, trying to preserve the base stair thread (with the already drilled peg holes).  The stair thread got a good sanding, and a fresh coat of stain.  Next, we sawed the old newel post off, right at the base.  Instead of removing the old newel post, it was thin enough for us to create a slip with the new (old) newel post.  We carved out a square at the bottom of the new (old) newel post, and slipped it over the old craptastic one, and secured it using our nail gun.  Next, we primed and painted our new stair spindles Silky White by Behr.  I ended up picking up a low-profile stair handrail, and cut my own piece of wood to use as the rosette, staining it the same color as the thread base. Why low profile?  I really wanted the newel post from Gold Rush to be the focal point.

Chiseling a hole to use as a slip.

Providing extra security for the newel post

Yesterday evening we finally got around to securing the spindles to the stair handrail and to the stair thread.  We gave it a little shake and it hardly moved.  Vast improvement from what was there before.  I would trust that a whale could probably lean on it.... hmm.  Maybe.

For this project, we used a lot of Poplar wood.  I like the variation of the wood, and it tends to be a bit more forgiving as opposed to hardwood (ha) like oak.

And just for comparison sake, here is a before and after shot--

Now

2006

Pre-now 2015

My apologies.  I seemed to have disliked the old set-up enough for me to avoid capturing photos of it... but you get the gist of it.  Now to put our home back together again...  Tootles.

Campaign Dresser Update

Remember these?

My apologies for the crap-tastic photo, but you get the picture. You can find previous posts about this handsome pair here and here.

Well folks, I finally finished it.  After what was a couple of years, I'm finally in a place where I am confident enough that I won't be changing them again.  I present to you the ugly duckling of dressers, now a swan.

Swoon!!!  The wood top was added and secured with brackets so that little trinkets and make-up brushes did not fall in between the cracks of the dresser... because that wasn't annoying at all.

I also added three coats of clear poly to the top because the wood was too beautiful to mask. For a fool proof application, follow the instructions on the can. **Big Tip: Sand in between coats, starting with a medium grit sandpaper and working your way down to a very fine grit sandpaper.

In the end, these $16.00 dressers were a process, a thorn in my side, and a pebble in my shoe, but I am beyond thrilled that I stuck with it.

Final breakdown of cost:

$16.00 Dressers
$28.00 Wood
$3.00 Brackets
$3.00 Tarn-x
"Free" Paint
_____________
$50.00 Total

Cost of a legit campaign dresser online?  $1,800.00.  You do the math.

IKEA HACK (Expedit Shelving)

Our poor basement has been undergoing a serious case of neglect.  It's where things go to die.. literally.

For the most part, me and Shane live upstairs.  With the exception of laundry and working in the art studio, our basement isn't a place we use much.  Even the dog avoids it.  This has me convinced that we could live in one of those 10 x 12 homes in the middle of no-where.  Dream big small.  Until that day comes, if at all, we are continuing to work with the space we have, and apply inventive ways to make it better.

Take the Expedit shelving unit for example:

Certainly something that can be found in any 20-65 year old's home.  You may not believe me if I told you, but I have seen an organized Expedit shelving unit before, in the flesh.  Honest.  Our shelving unit has housed everything from books to game systems, to platters and dishes, none of which looked organized.  Being a bit OCD, this bothered me, and because of it, our shelving unit had almost got the ax a few times, however, for sentimental reasons (first piece of Ikea furniture with the Hubster) and functionality, it stuck around.

Before coming to the realization that it would be cost effective to just re-vamp the dang thing, I was checking out media cabinets at West Elm, Crate and Barrel, and CB2, you know, the kind-of-affordable, grown-up furniture options.  However, the price tag for these consoles were tough to swallow.  If there wasn't a million things I wanted to tackle with our home improvement budget, I'd welcome these handsome storage units into our piece of split, anytime.  All of them.

Credit: West Elm

Credit: West Elm

Credit: Crate and Barrel

Credit: CB2

Now that countless hours of wishing and pondering were well spent, I finally had an idea for our Expedit shelf.  The one thing that all of these media storage units had in common was how random and unique they were, from the wood grain to the mixed materials.  I also wanted our shelf to function well for it's intended purpose (i.e: video game station). You could guess that this piece of furniture is for the husband, and you would be correct, however, I too like to dabble in some SNES action.  

The first step was removing the metal legs (not pictured) and replacing them with casters.  The purpose of this would be to move the unit with ease (untangling cords in the back, etc.)

After some measuring, I went and purchased 2x3's to build two frames and secured the corners with L-brackets.

Next, I went wood diving in and outside of our home, grabbing any leftover wood that I could salvage for this project.  

Variety is good in my eyes.  This unit is not something that I wanted to be perfect by any stretch of the imagination.  I wanted it to be as off-beat as possible.  Winning.

I cut the wood down to size and secured the panels to the frame using a nail gun.  Once the wood was secure, I flipped it over and added a set of hinges.

One door complete, on to the next.  Because my hinges created gaps on the side of the Expedit shelving unit, I had to cut off about an inch of wood from my other frame.  If you come across a issue such as this, just go with the flow. **Tip: Make one door first before starting on the other.  Ikea measurements are a little off, so adjust your plan accordingly.

The doors are slightly different widths, but that is okay with me.  Off beat, remember?  I ended up using a lot of cedar and premium wood in this piece.  Really anything with a pretty wood grain on it.  I also added some pulls from Anthropologie I had laying around the house.  All that is left is for the man of the house to set up his vid systems.

There you have it, my "Ikea Hack" for the Expedit Shelving Unit.  Bonus, the cedar smells amazing.  For this project, I didn't use any stains or poly.  I'm all about natural wood in it's natural state... er, in this case, fixed on our media storage unit.  Super happy with the outcome.  I've already been downstairs fifteen separate times enjoying it's company.  Flawless Victory.