Expert: Joseph G. Swallow - 9/13/2011

Question
Hi.  We live in a traditional two-story house.  It's about 7 years old.  We are trying to refinish/repair the stairs handrails.  Our ADHD son took a knife and carved top of the handrails.  The bottom part (the spindles?) is grey and the top part is wood.  Initially, we thought we could just sand and lacquer over the top wood part where the damage is but we can't -- we don't know what color the stain is so impossible to match. So, we're sanding the whole top handrail.  My question is:  is it possible to somehow detach/pound-out the top railing from the bottom spindles?  That way, if we could detach and reattach the top handrail it would look cleaner.  When painting the bottom spindles grey, paint was accidentally splattered a little bit.  When bought house, spindles were white.  Hope this all makes sense.  Any advice would be appreciated.  Thanks so much.

Answer
Depending on the shape of the handrail, a belt sander running up and down the length of the rail can take the finish off rather quickly, though it creates a lot of dust.  Near a newel and a wall one would have to finish these with an orbital sander with 80 or 60 grit paper.

Another option would be to acquire any wood that matches the handrail stain, take it in to a Miller Paint Store or a Sherwin Williams Store and they would custom mix a stain to match.

To detach all of the handrails from the spindles/balusters would become quite a project.  Usually you would have to first remove the balusters by twisting each one out of place, breaking any glue or brad nail hold with the handrail.  The danger here is breaking a baluster and then being forced to replace it with a match.  Then you would have to know which manufacturer it came from because each is not the same.  Once the balusters are removed, then you would have to find the wood plugs in the rail, remove them, with a half inch box wrench you would unbolt all of the handrail joinery.  This can be done, but it would require touching up all of the balusters when finished, and replugging the handrail joinery.

If you send me a photo of your rail and balusters I might be able to see something else.  You can e-mail me at joseph@westfiremfg.com

Hope this helps!