Our Stair Rail is in!!

For our railing, I wanted something that felt both modern & old at the same time.  It’s simple & clean and spare and has a beautiful patina.

When I visited Herndon IronWorks (literally a mile away from our old house) Tom & I looked around the shop so we could determine the finish I was after.

We soon found out that I was drawn to the metals that had aged naturally over time vs. any faux aged finishes.  Everything I liked was outside & had weathered to a rusty black.

To get the finish I wanted, Tom set the new iron for our railing outside & let it weather for a few weeks.

{We used 1/2 inch square pickets for our rails, seen at the top left of the above photo}

The end of the top rail is a lamb’s tongue that gently swirls into a sort of vine around the post:

You might remember that our stairs were originall very steep, and so to make them a bit more manageable for our boys (and us! 😉  CarrMichael Constrution put new stairs in.  I wanted to be able to see the sides of the stairs & to have the drywall go right into the steps themselves without a stringer, so Mike Carr (owner of CarrMichael) made it happen.  Here’s what the stairs looked like before:

…And here they are now:

The temporary door at the top of the stairs & the wooden horizontal old railings will both be removed & we’ve got lots of cleaning up to so (walls, woodwork, etc.) but we’re on our way!!  I love how the pickets attach directly into the drywall.  The curve into the drywall and are out farther than the stair treads, so they actually make the stairs even wider than before because there’s so much more usable space on them.

I’m so happy with how everything turned out & I really can’t thank everyone who was involved enough.  It takes so many hours & brains to really come up with something good & it’s definitely worth it!!  To read more about my stair inspiration, click here.