We have been talking about removing the handrail running in the middle of our outside stairs for a while now. In the old days there where only 2 handrails on the wall (see it here), but the PO had installed one running down the front as can be seen in the picture here.
So, since the weather was so nice today we wanted to get started. We started picking away at the concrete holding the rail in place – let’s just say it wasn’t as easy as we would have hoped for it to be. We ran into a slight problem with the top post as the stair had cracked when they first installed the handrail and it the corner has come off when we got the rail out. Time for some concrete tomorrow.
Post number two wasn’t much better, but eventually after 4 total hours of working on the removal process we where finally getting somewhere. There where times we wanted to give up on the whole process, but once it looked like this there was no turning back.
It was frustrating getting the lower post out. Actually it was more like mind games. The post wriggled freely and we could even turn the entire handrail around but it just didn’t want to come out. We gave it one final push and tried lifting it out of the whole, putting our whole power into it and the thing just came out smooth, smacking hubby on the fingers (which apparently hurt pretty bad). But look at the result! One step closer to restoring the house to the way it used to be. It was hard work, we feel a little bruised and battered from the many times we scraped our knuckles on the iron but we love the feeling of the staircase. Now a lot more people can sit out there together and that’s always a good thing.
