Fixing a loose handrail on 200 y.o. house

[khariV]

My father lives in an old guest house in a historic part of Philadelphia.  The "guest house" is around 6000 sq. ft., so I can only imagine how big the main house was before it burned down at the turn of the century.  The first part of the house was built sometime in the 1700's and has been expanded slowly over the past couple of hundred years.  The house is a curious mix of old time craftsmanship, two foot thick stone walls and crappy recent additions / changes that owners have made in the 50s and 60s.  He's fixing it slowly but surely, but the big "oh crap" fixes obviously get priority over stripping paint and refinishing flooring.

Back to the project at hand: the handrail on the main staircase was getting looser and looser and was at the point where hitting it hard would likely cause it to fail completely.  My dad was having some balance issues and this needed fixing ASAP, so I volunteered to see what I could do.

My first attempt at fixing it, stabilizing the newel post with 6" lag screws helped, but didn't address at all the larger problem that the handrail itself was quite wobbly.  The spindles of the handrail weren't secured to the stair treads and were made with trapezoidal tenons that were just banged into the tread.  Over time these had loosened and even securing them with screws didn't provide the necessary rigidity.

Bring on the steel!  I ended up making stabilizing braces from 1/8" steel bars.  I had to cut and finish the pieces by hand as I wasn't planning on doing this particular job; the only tools I brought were my drill and impact driver.  Luckily my dad did have a bench vise and a drill press or it would have taken even longer.  The side molding of the stairs was attached with hand-made nails, so it came off pretty easily.  In fact, most of it was already loose, which I am sure contributed to the problem.  So, after removing the nose molding of the stair treads (is that even the right name?), I attached and secured the braces with cabinet screws.  I then cut out notches in the molding with a spiral saw and screwed them back in with finishing screws.

I didn't have time to finish up the wood puttying / painting, but the project worked. It's not the prettiest fix, but the handrail is rock solid now and looks a lot better than the alternative of replacing it with new hand rail.  Once it's painted, it should be minimally ugly.  You can see from the pics that I really need more practice with the spiral saw to be able to control it better.  Every time I get one out, the centrifugal force of the bit ends up walking and making the cut go where I really don't want it to to.  


Just as a side note, everyone raves about the Makita Gold impact bits.  The stair treads and spindles are made out of some incredibly hard, very old wood.  I think it might be oak or mahogany.  Anyway, I was pre-drilling the holes for both the finishing and cabinet screws and I still ended up shattering 2 of the T15 Makita gold bits with the impact driver.  I gave up and went and bought some Milwaukee bits and those managed to last me the duration.

Here are some pics of the project in progress and my trusty red drills - go go Fuel.

 

 

[PeteW]

damn those are some old hand rails, the fix looks good and i am sure it a ton better. were you able to paint and try and cover up your patches you added to fix it?

[Nordraw]

How are you going to cover up the steel reinforcements? Looks like it will be a sturdy fix just wondering how you are going to make it look good, nice job.

[DR99]

I think he is just going to paint it. It was more for safety than aesthetics at this point.

[khariV]

I think he is just going to paint it. It was more for safety than aesthetics at this point.

 

Quite right.  The main priority is/was that the railing not fail.  Aesthetics were secondary as the other option we were considering should this have failed was to install an ADA compliant steel railing next to the existing hand rail.  This of course would have been significantly more obtrusive than the brackets.

 

I do plan on going back to fill in the screw holes and the seams with wood putty, but there's realistically no way that I'm ever going to able to do more than paint the metal brackets and screws.  They ought to blend, but certainly won't disappear.

 

I haven't had a chance to get back to Philadelphia to finish it up, but I'm hoping to in the coming weeks.  I'll have to take a pic or two to update the post when it's done.