Great job! It will be nice to see the stair rail and newel post replaced. There was a mansion here in Mpls that had been "modernized" post-war and they removed the balustrade and enclosed the stairwell. The woman who was restoring it in the early 80s was about to sign a work-order to have the missing parts remade when someone found most all of the parts in the attic. Saved her 10s of thousands of dollars.
We've looked everywhere! Thankfully, now we have the internet and so we're confident that we will be able to salvage nearly all of the parts that we will need to complete the rehabilitation of the staircase
A friend in Virginia had to remake most of his staircases because people had been squatting and used the spindles for firewood, He found a few scatt4red around the house and duplicated them.
The good thing about the WWII era conversions is they didn't waste time removing elements, they just slapped up partitions because housing was in such short supply. I'm sur[rised you found actual plaster.
In this case, they removed the balustrade and put up walls of button board and plaster. That's why we put the date at 1948-1949. A few years later and they would have used drywall (sheetrock)
I have a difficult time throwing it out if I think someone else would want it. After all, someone saved a balustrade, and so now I have one to use. That’s one of the great things about saving/preserving old houses
A house I worked on decades ago, had removed several elements, we acrually found the removed windows, trim, spindles etc, under the home and in the attic! Maybe y'all will get lucky and find some of those removed treasures😊
@@ChaplineHouse oh man, I'm sorry😓 was hopin hard for y'all! Maybe check some construction salvage places? Y'all are doin' an amazing thing. I can't wait too see how it all goes! Folks don't realize just how much work, sweat, sore thumbs and $$$$$ it really takes. Even doin' the work yourselves, it truly is a labor of love.
No blueprints. We're just going to have to feel our way. Having said that, we have a good community of local exerts. There are also many other Victorians from the period in town that have similar staircases which can be useful. Also, since this was the industrial age, staircases such as ours would be ordered as parts from catalogs. There are original catalogs to be found.
