handrail

Today's major house project is the installation of a "graspable handrail," required by county code for indoor and outdoor stairways that have four or more steps. Dad bought a handrail kit that includes a white, heavy-duty, PVC-style handrail. The color matches much of the deck, but the shape is a little weird. I had been expecting a handrail shaped a lot like the railing inside a handicap toilet cubicle, essentially a squared-off letter C, whose corners are curved but imply right angles. The railing Dad bought suggests a C shape, but the ends of the railing are designed to loop way out, then back 180 degrees, attaching to the front and rear sides of the deck posts, not to the sides of the posts facing the actual stair steps. In other words, I was imagining this, but instead we've gotten something that looks a bit like this (imagine that both ends have a 180-degree turn-- not just the left end; it's also a tighter turn than shown in that graphic).

I'm going to see if I can persuade Dad to get a simpler railing. The kit he's got requires us to make angled cuts in the material, but without Mr. Jeong's table saw, such cuts will be hard to make. Getting a more simply designed handrail would eliminate most of our troubles. More on this later.

UPDATE: No dice. We're using the U-bend railing. It's actually not as horrible as I thought, but it still sticks out like a sore tentacle.


_