Day 277 October 11, 2002

I need more wood. Off to the Middletown Home Depot at 8:00 AM. I need a few other things and that and the fact I can take all the time I want picking out lumber make it worth the trip. I get pine for the balusters I'm going to make, some 2 x 4's for the basement stairs and some shoe moldings. Back at the cabin I cut the pine boards into 26" long by 1 5/8" wide balusters. I sand them with the belt sander and begin the layout. Yesterday I cut, sanded and fit a lower railing into the two posts on the stairs. The railings are at about a 40 degree slope down the stairway and the balusters fit in between them plumb. The spacing has to match the spacing of the balusters on the loft railing to look right. I put tape on top of the lower railing and try to figure out the proper placement of the balusters that will make the gap between them and the gap between them and the posts equal and the same as the loft railing. That is easy to do on a level railing, not easy to do on a slope. It takes me 4 tries and even then I'm not sure it will be right until the last baluster is in. I try using a divider set to the distance between the balusters plus 2 times one half the width of a baluster, like I did for the loft railings. This doesn't work, I'm not sure exactly why, but probably because of the slope. Then I try using the distance plus 2 times the width of the balusters where they are cut on the 40 degree angle. This gets me close and from there I adjust the dividers a little at a time, step them up the railing until they end just where I want them. I get 2 balusters installed.

12 hours.