Safety first; a retrospective in handrailing

Well, it's been a long time coming. We have finished the handrail along the stairs. It's been about three years since we put the stairs in place and we finally have the handrail. Not unlike a first communion or an 8th grade graduation, this is a momentous time - so we look back through the magic of digital photography to relive the experience.

March 2007 - construction stairs went in weeks prior and remained in place for... well about 3 years.

March 2007 - one week later - the open stairs allowed alot of flexibility and were helpful in hanging a piñata from the dining room ceiling.

I think we know where this is going...


Yep.

and... it seemed like a good idea at the time

It was October 2008 before we finally got around to finishing the drywall, and i set about making the most amazing scaffold out of a ladder, a 2x8 and a half used bucket of joint compound

OSHA be damned

Summer 2009 - We became very comfortable in our unfinished ways.

But eventually by October 2009 we found all the final pieces, mocked them up and...

...promptly found a competent carpenter to put them all together

I did none of this

Once more unto the breach; a return to familiar ground

september 2009 that will buff right out

Before explaining the mess above, let me take you through the easy upgrades around the outside of the house. We made small stones out of larger stones to make a edging wall...

modern man gardens with the tools at hand

And we continued to make bad wires safe.

But the major work happened inside, as it always does, right in the middle of our livable area. This time we set our sites on the Master suite. Astute readers are quick to point out that this was the last place we were ever going to touch. We had staged our lives to allow the house around us to fall while the bedroom remained safe, clean and someone civil. If a house be a man's kingdom then certainly the bed be his throne (well at least a close second). And this was supposed to be the safe place. But sooner or later poor judgements and impulses can get the better of anyone and this throne room was looking damn nasty one day:

that panelling had to go

and so it did

fin. well, almost fin. just a little more paint...

renovations pending; the life pursuit

Hiatus is the appropriate term, a "break" sounds... well, accidental and I was never comfortable with the word sabbatical outside of a university setting or the pipe-and-slippers crowd. So a hiatus it is or rather was and it was a good one at that. But like a college pregnancy or the hangover that precedes... this was unplanned. We had high hopes for this summer like the years before with plans to tear into more complicated house work but instead we did this:

And this:

I'm a boat

and we learned the true value of our pick-up truck under the clause of clunker, or at least one of us did.

don't look back in anger

and we began to spread the love by helping out others. I helped this guy:

turn his bathroom into this:turnabout is fairplay

But the summer does end, and not unlike the television network's summer break, our hiatus drew to a close. So we look forward to this new season of home renovation not unlike the comfortable return to network prime-time broadcasting - like a warm hug from some returning relative to be captured on the film of our reality TV friends.

hearts