Oak Banister Refurb - Alton, Hants

Joinery – Oak bannister refurbishment – Alton, Hants

This job was a replacement of existing handrail, which was the largely undesirable 70’s “Planks nailed to the newels” look.

It’s always fun to put a sharp handsaw through those planks to make way for a nice new balustrade, and this time we used solid oak handrail, base rail and stop-chamfered oak spindles and newels with oak pyramid newel caps.

These were sourced from the Richard Burbridge American White Oak range.

The first step was to determine the height at which the existing newels should be cut, as the Richard Burbridge newels were pre-drilled to receive the handrail at the top, and spigoted at the bottom to be inserted into the stub of the old newel.

Once this was done, the existing newels could be cut, and a hole drilled in the centre to receive the spigot of the oak newel about the be inserted.

The edges of the existing newels also needed to be rounded over to match the bottom ends of the new oak newels.

Existing "plank" bannister's

Existing "plank" bannister's

Existing newels cut down, rounded over and drilled

Once the stub newels were ready, the new oak newels could be placed into position to be levelled. With the newels level, the handrail could now be cut to fit between the newels.

Oak handrail cut between oak newels

Handrail, baserail, spindles and newel caps fitted

The finished and sanded up solid oak bannister refurbishment

With the newels and handrails in position, the baserails could now be fitted, followed by the spindles and newel caps.

All that was left to do now was fill the fixing holes and sand off the edges.

Another handrail success story!

Technorati Tags: bannisters, oak, oak newel posts, oak newels caps, refurbished ballustrade, refurbished handrail, replacement bannisters, solid oak handrail, spindles, stop-chamfered oak spindles

Softwood & MDF staircase with Oak & Chrome handrail - West Sussex

Softwood & MDF staircase with Oak & Chrome handrail – West Sussex

This was the second of two staircases I worked on in West Sussex, the main staircase can be seen here.

This staircase was built in the newly constructed section that connected two originally separate buildings together to form a large single residence. As you can see in the image to the left, the staircase is actually 3 staircases connecting 4 different levels. This is because one of the original two buildings was higher than the other.

The stairs themselves were made from softwood strings and newel stubs, with MDF treads and risers, while the handrail was from B&Q’s range of Oak and Chrome.

Routing the softwood strings

The staircase having been assembled

A single bullnose at the bottom of the middle flight

It was a fairly straight-forward process, as although the staircase had to connect four floors, it was only three straight flights, with no winding sections. There had to be some careful measuring before construction began, as the tread rise and going for each flight was slightly different, and a landing had to be constructed at the top of the top flight to meet regulations as there was a doorway there.

The middle flight was fitted first

The bottom flight was fitted second

The top flight and landing was fitted last, before the handrail was started

The oak and chrome handrail, newels and spindles are fitted

The softwood stub newels were rounded over for decorational purposes before the chrome newel bases were fitted.

Once they were on, the oak newel posts were slotted in and the chrome handrail connectors were slotted onto them once the newels were cut to the correct height ( the oak newels and the oak handrail are the same and are supplied in lengths of around 3 metres).

The oak handrail could then be fitted and the chrome spindles then followed once the oak base-rail was fixed onto the softwood strings.

I must admit that i was dubious about the appearance of the B&Q Oak and Chrome handrail system, but once it was installed, it felt fresh, clean and modern, and really did look great

On the other hand, B&Q sell it as something for the DIYer, but i could imagine the average non-skilled DIYer having quite a bit of trouble getting their head around some of the initial measuring and positioning of components. And this is not helped by the slight irregularities of the chrome fittings which make some easier to fit than others.

But that said, this was another job that went really well, and as always, the best part was that my customer was very pleased with it.

Technorati Tags: Carpentry, guildford carpenter, guildford carpentry, guildford staircase, handrail, joinery, mdf, oak and chrome handrail, softwood and mdf staircase, staircase, surrey carpentry, west sussex carpenter, west sussex carpentry, woking staircase

Continuous Spiral Handrail in Maple

Continuous Carved Spiral Handrail in Maple – West Sussex

This is a job i was very pleased with. It took a lot of patience and frequent checks to make sure it was shaping up correctly, but the end result was extremely satisfying.

It was for a customer in West Sussex, who had bought a plot which had two separate buildings, the main house, and an annex a short distance away from the house. What he did was pretty fantastic, because he joined the two together to make one big house!

In fact, the Maple Handrail i’m describing here was for one of two staircases that would eventually be in the house, the other staircase I built from scratch, and can be seen HERE.

Original iron banisters to be removed

Original iron banisters to be removed

Original iron banisters to be removed

Above are some photos of the original iron banisters and hardwood handrail, and in my opinion, are extremely outdated and quite ugly. You might notice in the third photo that the spiral string (side of the staircase) has some awkward looking angles on it where the straight sections meet the spiral section.

Clamping pieces of timber onto the string to smooth out curve lines

Clamping pieces of timber onto the string to smooth out curve lines

Smoothed out curves ready to take baserail and handrail

After smoothing out the awkward-looking angles by sanding the convex edges and filling the concave edges, the spiral string was ready to use as a template for the new maple baserail and handrail.

Many people don’t realise that spiral baserail and handrail, although only about 30mm/60mm x 80mm in profile once finished, must be constructed from much larger lumps of timber to account for the curving. In this case, the lumps were around 120mm thick x 200mm wide x 650mm long, and the new spiral maple baserail and handrail each required 4 pieces of timber this size to be carved by hand and joined end-to-end.

Oversize lumps of timber being carved spiral, but squared profile.

Spiral carved sections being joined in square profile stage.

Square profile carving now complete for baserail

I began with the baserail, and each section of this had to be carved into its spiral shape, but square in profile. That is to say that no moulding or grooves were yet to be applied to the timber.

This was because once i had the whole baserail carved into a square profile, it would be much easier to uniform the finished profile using a router and other power tools.

The actual carving of each section meant that i continuously had to carve away some timber from the underside of the section, try it onto the section of the string that it would eventually be fixed to, carve some away, try it on again, and repeat until the underside of the section was exactly the same shape as the string. (To ensure i had exactly the right shapes for both the baserail and the handrail, i used the string as the template for the baserail, and the baserail as the template for the handrail) Once the underside was perfect, the sides and top of the section could be carved square to the underside. I don’t mind admitting that this was a laborious process that took a lot of patience, and I lost count of the times that I had electricians, plumbers and other tradesmen all staring at what i was doing in disbelief!

Carving the groove for the spindles into the baserail

Fine chiseling the groove for the spindles into the baserail after routing

Finished baserail with moulding and grooves

Once I had all the sections of both the baserail and handrail carved spiral and in square profile, I was able to begin routing out the grooves for the spindles to be located into, as well as the moulded profiles.

Routing out the holes for the connectors in the handrail

Routing out the holes for the connectors in the handrail

Routing the spindle groove onto the underside of the handrail

I created a jig on my router to accurately machine the bevel on the sides of the handrail

I created a jig on my router to accurately machine the bevel on the sides of the handrail

I used an angle-grinder to shape the top of the handrail free-handedly using diminishing grits

Fine-sanding the whole handrail

Fine-sanding the whole handrail

Handrail fits perfectly onto the baserail

Routing the mortice holes into the newels

With the spiral sections of both the baserail and handrail complete, the next thing to do was to mortice the newel posts for them to be fitted to.

These newels had a ’spigot’, or peg on the end of them, which was to be inserted into the stub of the old newels that had been chopped down to a specific height.

These stubs had to have 50mm diameter holes drilled into the top of them to take the spigot of the new maple newel posts, and i can tell you that those old western red cedar newels were hard as rock, my poor drill could barely cope!

With the newels fitted, i was able to fit the spiral handrail, as well as the straight sections upstairs

Spindles can now be fitted and it really starts to take shape!

As the spindles were fitted into the spiral section, each spacer between the spindles had to be carved to suit the spiral!

The spindles really make it look special

A huge improvement on the old iron banisters

Quite an impressive sight to see as you enter the house, I think!

Although this job was hugely time consuming and very fiddly at times, i thoroughly enjoyed it. The customer was a really nice guy, and always doing what he could to help out, and that makes a big difference on a job like this. (There was also always a lot of tea, coffee and chocolate biscuits to be had! )

It’s a job that i’m extremely proud of, and i’m sure that my customer was as pleased as i was with it, and that is what it’s all about!!

Feel free to get in touch with me if you’d like something similar done for you, or even if you’d like a bit of advice. I’m always happy to help

Technorati Tags: Carpentry, guildford carpenter, guildford carpentry, handrail, new handrail, new spindles, refurbished handrail, replacement bannisters, router, spindles, surrey carpentry, west sussex carpenter, west sussex carpentry, woking carpenter, woking carpentry

Continuous oak handrail and spindles - Alton

Continuous oak handrail and spindles – Alton

This job was actually for my grandmother.

The image to the left shows the finished job, having installed the continuous oak handrail and spindles on to the staircase that before i started,  actually had no safety measures in place whatsoever! And what kind of wood-working grandson would I be if I simply allowed my grandmother to continue dicing with death up and down an unsafe staircase?!

As you can see in the picture to the left, the spindles are morticed into the cut string, and at the top eventually diminish into a rail on the ceiling.

This meant that in order to have a single handrail all the way up on the right side the staircase, there had to be an “S” bend in the handrail for it to get around the ceiling.

"S" bend in the oak handrail

Continuous handrail is shaped around the ceiling

Staggered oak spindle to avoid awkward joint to handrail

Up until the “S” bend, the oak spindles were slotted into a groove on the underside of the handrail. Above the “S” bend, the handrail had no groove, as the spindles were no longer underneath the handrail, since they diminished into the ceiling, and it was bracketed to the wall.

The “S” bend however presented difficulties when it came to joining it to the spindle that was underneath it. I got over this by chopping the top of the spindle at the same angle as the pitch of the staircase, and about 40mm below the handrail. I then chopped another small peice of the spare oak spindle with the same angle at either end, and glued that to the shortened spindle, before finally chopping a 3rd small peice angled at the bottom end but square at the top, and glued this to the 2nd peice, which left me with staggered spindle that missed the “S” bend of the oak handrail, and joined neatly into, and formed the first spindle of the ceiling rail.

Its funny how the smallest jobs can sound so confusing!

The end result was a good one though, and a big plus is that my grandmother is now safe

Technorati Tags: alton carpenter, alton carpentry, Carpentry, continuous handrail, handrail, joinery, new handrail, new spindles, oak, oak handrail, oak spindles, refurbished handrail, spindles, woodwork

Double winding staircase in softwood & MDF

Double Winding Staircase in softwood & MDF-Guildford.

This was another staircase built on site.

It leads from the first floor of a semi-detached house in Guildford up to a loft conversion on the second floor.

The strings (sides of the staircase) and the newels were in softwood, and the treads and risers were in MDF.

There were two winding sections, one three “kite” tread section as you step on to the staircase, turning right as you go up, then a six tread straight flight before arriving at the second three “kite” tread winding section turning again to the right and onto the second floor landing.

This staircase was directly above the staircase from the ground floor to the second floor, allowing the required minimum 2 metres of headroom between the two.

The Process

Setting out the staircase

Routing the strings

Gluing the risers into the treads

Sanding the strings before assembly

Assembling the straight flight section

Trying the newel posts and winding treads

Fitting the staircase, main section first.

Fitting the winding treads

Fitting the handrail and spindles

Installation complete, ready to be decorated and carpeted

I always find staircases extremely satisfying to do.

When done well, they add a great deal of character to any house.

In this case, there wasn’t a huge amount of space to work in while making the staircase, but it is always an advantage to have the place where the stairs are going to end up close by so that any measurements that you need during the job are there to hand and progress is not hindered.

I love getting rid of the ladder that has been used upto the point of staircase installation and standing back and enjoying a newly fitted staircase. And everyone else working on the site is always pleased to not have to carry all their tools up and down ladders anymore too!

Technorati Tags: Carpentry, guildford carpenter, guildford carpentry, handrail, joinery, kite stairs, mdf, new spindles, router, site work, softwood, staircase, surrey carpentry, winding staircase

Newly fitted banisters

Newly fitted banisters in St Johns, Woking

As a carpenter and joiner, it’s always a pleasure to bring wooden furniture and household features up to date.

What you see to the left is the newly fitted banisters that replaced some that were fairly out of date.

In this case, the square newel posts were kept as they were, and we installed new handrail, base-rail, spindles and newel caps, which were sourced by the customer from Wickes in St Johns, Woking.

Once i have met with the customer and advised them on what their options are, with replacement handrail jobs,  I usually suggest that the customer gets hold of the materials themselves, because that way, they get what they want and they know that they are paying the right price.

Currently, i am hearing from a lot people who would like to have their staircase modernized. When house were being built in the 70s and 80s, it was then fashionable to have the horizontal boarding fitted between the newel posts, but nowadays it isn’t so desirable. Another concern, particularly for this customer, is that their young toddlers could be very tempted to use the horizontal banisters as a climbing frame, which could very easily end in tears!

The Process

70s/80s horizontal banisters to be removed

Old banisters being removed

Old banisters now removed and old holes filled

The first thing to do was to put down all the dust sheets to protect the carpet from the majority of the dust.

Next was to remove the existing newel caps and cut out the handrail and balustrading using a handsaw. Once this was done, the tops of the newels needed to be prepared to fit the recess of the new newel caps.

I used angle brackets to fix the new handrail to the existing newels, which had to be rebated into both the newels and the new handrail, so that they wouldn’t be seen once the rebates were filled.

As always with old staircases, over time, the newels had shrunken out of square, so careful measurements and recording of angles had to be made in order to cut the ends of the handrails and base-rails so that they joined nicely to the newel posts.

Once the new handrails and base-rails were fitted, i used two part filler to make good the small holes and cracks around where i had filled the old holes with timber, and sanded everything flat to give a good surface to be decorated.

Spindles now installed

Next was fitting the spindles, which required calculating the equal spaces between each, and then cutting the spacers to the right size.

This is one of my favourite parts of this kind of job, because once you have the spacers and the spindles all cut to the right length and angle, fitting them is a very quick job, providing you have a nail gun (which i do!). If you only have a hammer and nails, than it will take about 6 or 7 times as long, but in comparison to the rest of the job, which can be quite strenuous and laborious, it is a real breeze, which is all the nicer when it is the last part of the job!

This job took a bit longer than a normal working day, but I stayed a bit longer in this case to get it finished, as leaving it unfinished wouldn’t be safe for the customers young children.

The customers very kindly let me work on their banisters while they were out, so as to let me get on with it as efficiently as possible. The job was finished within the timescale quoted, and all in all, everyone was happy!

A nice job

Technorati Tags: handrail, joinery, new handrail, new spindles, refurbished handrail, replacement bannisters, spindles, St johns carpenter, st johns carpentry, staircase, surrey carpentry, woking carpenter, woking carpentry

This was a really nice oak staircase to do. It was for an impressive new build house in West Byfleet, and the client had the build planned out very well, which always helps in acheiving the desired result. This was in fact 2 two staircases as the house has three floors, the flight shown above was from the ground floor, leading up to the first floor. You can just see the second staircase directly above this one which leads upto the second floor. The double bullnose and twin monkey-tail handrails really make for a spectacular entrance through the front door into the main hallway.

This image shows a view of both oak cut string staircases from the top floor, and from here, you can also see the curved oak gallery handrail. In case you

Cut string oak staircases - view from ground I

Cut-string oak staircases - view from ground II

Oak cut-string staircases - view from first floor

Cut-string oak staircase - before assembly

If you’d like to enquire about having work done similar to this, please don’t hesitate to get in touch by clicking here

Technorati Tags: Carpentry, joinery, staircase, surrey carpentry, west byfleet carpenter, west byfleet carpentry, woking carpenter, woking carpentry

Another nice job in West Byfleet this week, i’ve been fitting the oak nosing that goes underneath the curved gallery ballustrading on the first floor of the house.

Here the curved sections of the oak nosing have already been fitted. 18mm of ply facing had to be cut down to take it as well as chiseling out some of the screed.

Once the nosings were fixed in place, the oak balustrading which had already been fabricated at Mayford Joinery could be positioned and fixed into place above the nosing.

Here some batons have been fixed to the facing. If you put a spirit level on the batons, they show as plumb, unlike the facing they are fixed to

The nosing could only be fixed on once 18mm of ply facing was cut by the thickness of the nosing, and there was some screed that needed chiseling out too. The curve of the oak nosings and the curve of the ply facing were completely different. I had to position the nosing about 25mm proud of the ply facing in some areas, in order for the apron to be able to slot up into the groove in the nosing.

Once the curved nosing  sections were fixed on, it was pretty straightforward to fit the straight sections in between the curved sections, and between the curved sections and the newels at either end.

Once all the sections of the nosings were fixed in place, the pre-fabricated curved balustrading could be positioned and fixed above the nosing. Mayford Joinery did a great job putting this balustrading together.

With the nosing in place, the next job was to mark down from the groove on the underside of the nosing, measuring how thick the batons that would be fixed to the ply facing would need to be. This was a pretty laborious job, as the ply was kinked and warping all over the place. I had to mark where each 25mm baton would go, being spaced 50mm apart, and then use a spirit level to project down from the rear side of the nosing groove and measuring the gap between the level and the ply facing at the top and bottom facing to work out how thick each baton would have to be at each end.

Batons were fixed on with a screw at the top and the bottom.

More batons fixed on

All batons now fixed on

Conrad at Mayford Joinery very kindly let me mark out and cut all 74 batons at his workshop using the bandsaw. I have to say that without a bandsaw, this part of the job would have been a bit of a nightmare, and wouldn’t have been that accurate!

With all the batons tapered and numbered, it was pretty easy to fix them onto the facing, actually it was quite therapeutic!

The next job was to cut the mdf apron to size. We used a sheet of 6mm mdf with one side having been kerf-cut, allowing the mdf to bend very easily while keeping the face side very smooth for when it will be painted.

The measurement from in the groove of the oak nosing to the ceiling below was about 415mm so i cut two 420mm strips of bendy mdf, one to go into each of  the curved sections of the gallery.

Once cut, the 8

After a few minutes of trying to persuade the apron into the groove, it was becoming clear it was going to take more than two hands and a sash cramp to get it in it

First section of the bendy mdf is fixed on. We did the same on the other curve. Once they were both fixed, i then just had to cut 420mm x 1232mm peice of regular 6mm mdf onto the straight section between the two curves. Because the top edge was secured by the groove, all that was required to fix them on was a single course of pins along the bottom edge of the apron and along the sectional joins. Where the joins met, i added an additional baton to the facing that both joining edges of the mdf could be fixed to.

Once all the sections of 6mm mdf apron were fixed on, the next job was to tidy up the bottom edge, by taking off 5 or 6mm to match it to the ceiling line. This was more difficult than you might think due to the kerf-cut mdf. If i planed it, it would have broken off the kerf cuts on the back of the apron before they had become short enough not to obstruct the cover bead that would later be fitted. So i marked the ceiling line onto the mdf using a very sophisticated peice of notched out baton, placed the notch over the apron excess and slid the baton along the ceiling behind the aprons excess and used the remaining end of un-notched baton as a scribe to run my pencil along, giving me the perfect ceiling line. I then belt-sanded the apron excess up to the line.

With the apron now flush to the ceiling, the next job was to make the cover beads for the underneath of the apron.

The 35mm wide cover bead was made using 6mm mdf. The straight sections were very straight-forward and use very little material, but when it comes to the curved sections, you need to make sure you have enough material! You cant bend a straight section, you have to cut it to the radius you need, and for two curved sections of 35mm bead, you

I made the curved sections of the cover bead using a router. I basically used it like an over grown pair or compasses. I cut a peice of mdf long enough to fix my router to and measure from the cutter along to the point of my radius. I then screwed through the pivot point and made sure that enought material was under the cutter of my router when i moved it along the circumference of the circle.

Here are the finished curved beads. I also routed a 4mm radius detail onto the edges of all the sections of bead. Quite a lot of work for something so small!

Once the routing was done, i then cut the curved beads to the right length and fixed them underneath the apron by pinning them to the same batons the apron is pinned to. Once they were on, i then cut the straight sections between the curves and the newels.

Job Done!

Me just about to pack up at the end of a productive day!

Technorati Tags: apron, bandsaw, batons, Carpentry, handrail, joinery, mdf, oak, radius, router, site work, staircase, west byfleet carpenter, west byfleet carpentry, woking carpenter, woking carpentry, woodwork