Building a new home brings many challenges and choices along the way; color selection, material, budget. One choice affects the next, and so on. Important decisions can be forgotten about, or continually be pushed back until…it’s too late. This staircase had minimal clearance. Bulky wood railings not only take up more space, they also require early decisions about attaching posts to the structure, stain vs paint, etc. Not to mention the fact a wood spindle railing will do little to open up the space, when the theme is “open concept”.
To solve this issue of space, we used the existing stub wall divider, in between the set of stairs, to mount an aluminum base shoe. The base shoe is mounted directly on top of the finished structure with concealed lag bolts. This is a huge benefit, as it allowsany staining and painting work to be done before the railing is installed. Now the staircase could be divided by a one-half-inch piece of tempered clear glass, not intruding on either side of the stairs and helping these existing stairs look tremendously more spacious than they actually were.
This clean and simple installation, with no glue, paint, or stain to be applied after the finish products of the home are installed, made damage to the railing system after installation far less likely. Plus, we were able to attach a sleek stainless steel hand railing through the glass going from the top of the main floor to the basement, again with minimal visual disruption to the open concept. Base shoes and pipe railings are available in stainless steel, or powder-coated aluminum to color-match if needed.