Railing

This week we had a walk thru with the heating/cooling, electrical and plumbing trades. We met them all at the B.A.B. Thursday morning, hoping to efficiently show them the space, the location of utilities and answer their questions. That’s not exactly how it went.  They arrived from 15 minutes early to 30 minutes late and scattered throughout the building, from the basement to the roof. It seems the construction industry attracts folks that are hard to herd. If all goes well with the bidding, we expect to be starting their work next week, but given how the walk thru went, we’re not placing any bets.

In the meantime, we are continuing to scavenge for parts we need. No luck on finding a spiral staircase, yet, if you know of one up for grabs, let us know! But we now have the mezzanine rail.

Railing at mezzanine

We need a railing at the front of the bedroom mezzanine and are hoping to find something interesting that will fit the opening. This weekend, we went ‘shopping.’

The first railing we looked at was still in a building, but was holding on by a thread. It is the right length and has a pretty rosette at the center of the railing sections.

What is holding this up?

The challenge, besides figuring out how to get it out of there in one piece and how to do that without injury, was how we would be able to reinstall it in our location. The vertical posts were pretty rusted. To make it work well, it really needed the steel plate that connects the railing to the balusters. If we installed it like this, it would make our purposely thin mezzanine edge much thicker. So, we kept looking.

 

At our favorite salvage guy’s place, we found a simple steel railing with some cool bulbous tees and elbows. He even had a few spare pieces that he threw in.

This one is a much easier solution

If we had been able to figure out how to make the other railing work, it would have been a much more interesting story, but decided we don’t ALWAYS have to take the most difficult path.