A custom home builder in the greater Philadelphia area was renovating an old barn to turn it into a beautiful home. They decided to reuse as much as possible while they turn it into their rustic modern home. The builder reached out to us as they wanted a custom modern and minimalistic stair railing design.
We facilitated multiple design meetings with the builder, supervisor architect, and designer to zero in on the desired custom design. The first decision confirmed was for the cap rail to be rustic, modern and minimalistic. Featuring a half oval cap rail design. This railing also boasted a 1 ½ X 1” bar channel underneath for us to punch the railing pickets through. We then welded the pickets with hidden welds. The custom iron railing picket sizing was a tough decision for this client and design team. The client considered several picket sizes including, ½” square, 5/8”square, 5/8”round. The clients desired to have all the pickets be drilled directly into the reclaimed barnwood floor. With that desire came the discussion of cover shoes or cover plates. Through our dialogue, we determined that we would drill a minimal size hole and epoxy the railing picket directly into those.
This railing featured the detail of the stair railing pickets being attached to a bracket on the side of the stairs. To add even more detail and challenge we had to bend some of the stair pickets outward and upward to clear the stair treads. This gave the illusion of a floating stair railing that was suspended beside the stair treads. This required another lengthy design discussion. The architects proposed a forged lollipop design for the bottom of the stair railing pickets.
Another serious concern that we had was for the rigidity in these long spans of railing. Especially keeping the minimalistic approach to the anchoring of the railing posts. So, we created the idea of drilling through the floor system with a welded washer underneath. This created a square fastening through the plate into the bottom of the post.
The custom railing design was challenging to build, but our skilled craftsman got through it. They finished the railing off in the shop with a pretreatment, a hot dip galvanizing and a powder coat finish. Then the final step was installing this rustic, modern and minimalistic railing onto the Philadelphian home.
