Banister Update

I Should Have Taken "Before" Photos

...But you can use your imagination.

Picture this. A banister painted semi gloss white with grooves in the surface from years of wear. I'm sure that my rings weren't really helping at all at maintaining any semblance of smoothness. The grime from dirty fingers was really ground into those rough areas.

Honestly, I was using cleaner on the surface of the banister to keep the dirty ground in stuff at bay, but then we met our tipping point and realized it had to come down. See the brackets holding the banister in place were not put in very well and were starting to separate from the wall. There was damage around the original plastic anchors that were used to secure the screws and the banister would actually rock back and forth if you put any weight on it and it was only a matter of time until it came out of the wall.

I should mention that the wall is plaster. I know my limitations and I can say with certainty any patching I would do would make it worse. So we found these cute little decorative wood blocks that we used to cover up the mess that was our wall in these areas. Now, of course that involved new holes and anchor points but you can't see them.

We also took the easy way out with the paint. A light sanding of the whole surface and a can of spray paint fixed our problem. I actually picked a satin finish with a Krylon called "Vintage Red" and painted both the banister and the decorative wood blocks with it. I think it was a quick easy fix and the banister in this new color actually pops. We seem to have a lot of red accents in our house despite the base colors of green all around. So far, it's worked for us.