Stair Railing

 Not a whole lot to show on this project, but I decided to finally fix the railing I tore out.  Funny story, I put a hall tree back in that storage area and I sold it.  Well, when I went to get the hall tree out...apparently it wasn't as easy to get out as it was to put in there.  So I had to rip out the wall partition that was there.

This was the only photo I could find of the original partition that I ripped out.  This was back when I was purchasing the house.

So here is what it looks like now.  I turned this room into a storage area.  There's really no other use for it.  You can see where the partition used to sit.

I decided to go with a wood railing, the reason was because I recently redid the handrail.  It was previously painted white.  Have you ever had a white hand rail in your house?  Worst mistake I have ever made.  I was recently stained in Minwax Early American.

For the railing I used metal conduit that I already had on hand.  I spray painted them a black matte color.

Taking some measurements.  I ended up by a 4x4 post and a 2x4.

If I were to do this project again, I would wait to paint the conduit until I cut them, because I ended up having to retouch all of them.

Staining all of the wood.

If you're starting to think this looks like a deck railing...I think so too.  I did use a lot of elements you would see on a deck, like the post cap.  I still think it looks better than it originally did though.

I used a 3/4" drill bit and drill 7 holes on each side (the post and the 2x4).  I measured them all out at 4" apart.  I read somewhere that 4" is the correct spacing, not sure if that's accurate or not.  I tried to hide all of the screws as best I could.  I also put a coat of polyurethane on the inside (where the 7 holes were drilled) because I knew it would be hard to do once everything was attached.

Projects are never as easy as everyone makes them look.  If you have a house like mine, nothing ever goes according to plan.  The problem I found when I went to install the railing was there was a big chunk of concrete at the bottom of the wall.  The concrete set me back a day as I had to chip away at it with a rock hammer.

I used a hammer drill to pre-drill holes into the concrete floor so the railing could be a bit sturdier than the wall partition that was up there before.

After it was installed, I put 2 coats of polyurethane on it.  Not perfect by any means, but I do think it looks a lot more put together than it did before.

I chose to go horizontal instead of vertical with the railing because I wanted it to be different than actual stair rails.  I also didn't want it to look like a jail cell 😂.

Hope you enjoyed this post.  I really enjoyed making this railing.

Hedgehog Wheel

I just couldn't leave this hedgehog cage alone. The next thing we ended up doing was making a homemade wheel and took inspiration from this video.  I will start off by saying, if I were to do a redo on this project, I would not have made a huge hole in the center, I would have left it a 5/16 hole instead.  In the video I referenced earlier, he too made some notes on what he would have changed, so I took that advice and I got hex bolts instead of carriage bolts.  Here are the supplies I ended up getting:

The Wheel:

• Plastic wash basin from Amazon

Wheel Components:

• (1) 5/16 x 3" hex bolt
• (4) 5/16 x 18 hex nuts
• (1) 5/16 x 18 wing nut
• (3) 5/16 x 1-1/2" fender washers
• (3) 1/4 x 1" hex bolts
• (3) 1/4 x 20 hex nuts
• Fidget spinner, I already had this on hand but you can find them cheap on Amazon (to remove the middle portion of the fidget spinner, simply pry it out with a flat head screwdriver, if you can't do it by hand, this is where your 5/16 x 3" hex bolt will go)
  

I bought all of my nuts/bolts/washers at Sutherlands and spent about $5, since I already had the fidget spinner, this project ended up costing me $15.00.  Now, in the video tutorial you will notice that his is on a stand made of PVC pipe.  I really liked the looks of that because you could tell it was a homemade project, and that just seemed cool to me.  We ended up forgoing the PVC pipe though and mounting it directly to the cage.  To do this, all I had to do was measure where I wanted the wheel to end up and drill a 5/16" hole on the back of the cage.

Now Teddy has all sorts of room in his 2 story condo.  I was worried that Teddy wouldn't like it, because the wash basin I bought has a slight taper to it.  Rest assured though, he loves it and was on it all night.  We had a silent spinner before, which isn't exactly silent but I will say it was more quiet than our homemade wheel.  Still I like the looks of it and it's so much easier to clean since it's all one smooth surface.  All in all, I would rather pay $15-$20 for our homemade version than the $40 store version.  This was so easy to do, if you are even thinking about trying it for yourself...you should!

It looks a little shaky here with my son spinning it, but it looks a lot more stable with Teddy on it.  We will try to update a video of him on the wheel soon!

 

More detailed video:

**Sorry for the confusion, in the video I say 5/8, I mean 5/16**

Some recent pictures of Teddy.  We tried to get him to love his dig bin by adding treats in there....he is still not a fan.