Loft Guardrail

Three and a half weeks ago I extolled Rosslyn’s perennially perfect poppies as a timely analgesic to the inconvenient-but-overdue termination of an habitually untimely, underperforming (I’m being generous!) subcontractor who had been charged with custom cabinetry, stairway railing, and loft guardrail.

Here’s a snippety flashback.

Let’s assume that “cocky pop” is the body double for a recent Rosslyn icehouse OPUD whose fumbling and bumbling would appear comical if we weren’t paying it, depending on it, wasting time and digital ducats endeavoring to communicate and coordinate with it, and generally enduring its disfunction and dyspeptic demeanor. (Source: Cocky Pop & Poppycock)

It was a cathartic post. Purgative. Recuperative.

Apart from the initial wave of euphoric relief (after notifying the incompetent carpenter that we’d be discontinuing his services effective immediately), the reality soon settled upon me with sobering clarity. I’d most likely be continuing and concluding the cabinetry, stairway handrail, and loft guardrail on my own.

I’m not suggesting that this was a surprise. It had occurred to me long before deciding to abbreviate the OPUD’s lackluster tenure. In fact, it had been a big part of my consideration.

I’m not a carpenter. But I do have some limited experience fabricating and installing cabinetry. And I have lots of experience designing, engineering, and instructing others how to fabricate and install cabinetry. So, considering the unabashedly substandard skills the OPUD had exhibited during partial fabrication and installation of the cabinetry, there remained little question in my mind whether or not I could execute at least as well, if not considerably better.

But the guardrail and handrail installation were more daunting than the cabinetry. I’d never attempted the process, and it’s actually relatively complicated. Sure, I’d designed the handrail and balusters up to the icehouse loft, and the parts had already been fabricated. (Note: I’d ensured that the OPUD deliver anything he’d already fabricated prior to discontinuing his services.)

But I had inherited decisions that didn’t make 100% sense to me, and — with only one small run of loft guardrail already installed (and imperfectly at that), the lion’s share of the “ciphering” would fall to me. Sure, I could hunt around for another finish carpenter, preferably someone with a higher level of expertise than the OPUD, but given current backlog in the trades I suspected it wouldn’t be an efficient way to resolve the problem.

Nevertheless, I did put out a couple of inquiries. The responses were as predicted. At least three months out for one, and one month out for the other.

In an apparent stroke of good fortune, a member of our team who’d recently concluded his scope of work did express interest in assisting me on the railings. Thought he might be able to partner up with another member of his team so that collectively we could tackle the project. I did briefly set my hopes on this possibility, but in short order it became apparent that I would be on my own.

By this point I’d reverse-engineered the one section of installed guardrail. and I’d ordered the necessary hardware for the installing the second guardrail and stairway handrails. Ditto for the balusters.

Many sketches later — and considerably more math than my literary-centric brain prefers — I felt reasonably confident that I could execute the project. A couple of weeks down the road, and I’m making headway. It’s premature to showcase my work on the railings yet, but today I’d like to update you on loft guardrails.

In the photograph above you see two sections of horizontal guardrail, one on the left/north and one on the south/right. Standing in the icehouse’s main room and looking up (back to the west and facing east), the completed guardrails do a handsome job of tying the space together. But their simplicity belies their complexity. Especially for a first timer! So many small, sub steps there are. So many incremental decisions. So many tools and techniques that I needed to acquire in short order.

But, as the photo shows, I figured it out. And it was surprisingly rewarding to accomplish this first and simplest step of the project that I unwittingly inherited at the 11th hour in a project timeline already well overdue. Aside from starting with the second loft handrail because not having it represented the biggest risk of injury, it also offered the simplest introduction to the project. Horizontal versus sloped installation significantly limited the scope of the challenge. And since I was sourcing and learning to use new-to-me hidden hardware to secure the rail and balusters, it was a relief to immerse myself in this new venture with the fewest calculations and the most minimal risk of messing up.

And so it is that this afternoon we can celebrate a small incremental victory. Progress!

Stairway handrails soon…