so background story is this: we’ve owned our town house for about 2 years, and for the most part we love the place.
however, there were some minor details that the previous owners obviously slammed in at the last second in order to sell the place. they did so with little regard to craftsmanship. the railing is a perfect example. we have 2 long staircases, both with the cheapest of wood railing, and the best part: not a single bracket was put into a stud. i mean it actually takes work to miss every single stud. needless to say, the railing was ripping out of the wall or being pushed into the wall and it was unsafe, especially for me after knee surgery when i actually needed to use it. so my sister jenny and her boyfriend matt came to the rescue. calling this things “i” made today is not fair. these are things i marginally participated in doing. most of the credit goes to matt. although i did help with the math portion of the project. but it’s been so long since i had to figure out angles, i think a high school student could have told us what angles to cut the wood to faster than we did the first time around.
we spent a long time just finding studs and figuring out the angles and lengths of everything. then all the cutting of the wood and sanding of the edges. and finally (after two days of work) we had the railings on the walls. here is the upstairs view: 
then the next step was to stain and varnish the railings. this was pretty quick, and the end result looks great. and it’s safe. and our holes in the walls are patched. yay for home improvement!
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writes one year blog anniversary and jason's top ten - things i made today[…] for matt for spending an entire weekend building a railing for us. matt – it’s on its way to […]
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