This is one excited little girl right here. We absolutely can not keep her out of the attic space even though it is not finished. She would sleep up there already if we would let her, or had a bed up there yet. She just smiles so sweetly and says please may I go up to my room, what else can you do but give in?
If for some reason we have to tell her no, this is what the Boogie Monster looks like at our house. Its not a pretty sight and definitely would scare the bejesus out of me if it were living in my closet. In order to keep this monster at bay we had to finish a very important part of the room build out....
The banister that goes around the stair opening. I seriously had nightmares about one wrong step and down went Jon, or Boogie or myself, so that banister had to go up.
It was not a quick project at all. There were lots of pieces and some fabrication of railings, because HD had some really crappy wood that day, so it took some time. We also decided that at 1.97 a spindle compared to 4.95 a spindle we would make the banister out of pressure treated pine. By the way there are 31 spindles total not including the 4 corner posts, so that starts to add up quickly.
Even using pressure treated porch railing pieces I have to say I think the final result is pretty amazing. Jon did a great job fabricating the hand railings out of regular ole 2x4's and the toe boards are made out of the scraps. Way to use the whole product honey!!
This much of the banister took about 3 hours to measure, cut and construct, like I said it was not a quick project. Doesn't it look great though?
The shape is a little unusual per my dad's design, but it works well. We prefer to say it looks like the rear of a little sail dingy rather then a coffin since it closely resembles both.
Finally with all the pieces cut and put into place it was time to put a primer coat on the finished banister. Because the flooring is still not in we let Boogie help us. Its fun to have her involved in building her big girl room and she of course just loves it. Painting of wood is where my dad and I parted ways on this project, but I have to say this is unusual for me too. I usually even opposed to staining wood, but remember this is pressure treated pine which means the wood is that lovely green color, so would have been hard to stain and poly and still have a nice look. Plus the white will fit into the look of the room perfectly, and Boogie loves it. Sorry dad but just this once I prefer the painted wood.
On the day that we finished up the banister we also went and picked up Boogie's new bed. Dad had volunteered to build her a mates bed with drawers underneath for storage, but he ran out of time. I got very lucky and found one of craigslist with a bookcase headboard for even more storage. Woo hoo!!! It is not as high a quality as anything that dad would make, but it works beautifully in the space and is perfect for what we need it for, plus coming off of craigslist it was fairly inexpensive and we are recycling. Hopefully in some post soon I will be able to show you what the whole bed looks like but for now the headboard lives in the attic and the rest of the bed is in pieces downstairs in the living room.
Stay tuned for the next installment of "As the Attic Turns' entitled either "Jon totally floored me", or "Look who's coming out of the closet. Until then we'll leave a light on in the attic for you. :D
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