I’ve almost completed the first round of railing construction, which has involved building new railing with treated lumber to make a walkway down to the lake from the lake house.
The closer to the water you get, there are already stairs on place and fairly intact railing, so my new railing will join up to the old railing for now. In the future, I may fully replace the old railing, but for now it works well and looks totally fine. I will be staining both the old and the new railing a reddish brown color to match the color of the lake house’s deck, and painting the metal brackets of the old railing a similar color so that everything matches. Right now, there is a fairly stark difference in color:
Building the new railing hasn’t been extremely difficult, although the constant trips up and down the stairs has definitely been a workout. I’ve used a gas powered auger to dig the post holes, which helps power through some of the roots and rocks in the dirt.
With this past weekend’s progress, I’m probably only one additional week of work from meeting up with the old railing on both sides and being ready to stain the wood.
Looking down from the stairs, you can see where the old railing continues all the way down to the water:
One final note from this last week’s construction is that my trusty impact driver is now resting at the bottom of Lake Wisconsin after taking a tumble down the hill and literally falling off of a cliff. I replaced it with a brand new version, but will remember the old one that gave its life for this project.
