If you’ve been holding your breath for the final reveal of my stair landing railing, I’m sorry, you’ve probably passed out by now. ‘Cause I know it’s been forever since I promised it. But here it is, my solution to the tricky stair landing in my house.

It has actually been done for months now. But because it’s in the same room where Juniper sleeps, finding the time and light to photograph it, and then edit the pictures and write this post, has been tough. And also, I’m a perfectionist. So waiting for everything to be just how I wanted it, with the opportunity to take the best possible pictures with my actual camera, was really holding me back.

It’s still winter, which means the light in here isn’t going to be great for months. And even when it’s at its winter best, I’m too busy with a baby to take advantage of it. Or she’s asleep a few feet away, with nothing but a curtain and very creaky floorboards between us.

So I’m finally saying screw it, and just showing you what I’ve done. There are some cell phone shots mixed in with shots from my good camera, and some real-life tweaks, but if I wait for everything to be perfect, I might never blog again.

(Story of my life lately. I think there’s a lesson in here for me.)

But on to the room!

Here’s what the space was like when we bought the house:

These are literally some of the first pictures I saw of the house, so I didn’t take these, a real estate agent probably did. Am I the only one who LOVES looking at old real estate listing photos of their house? It’s the most satisfying thing ever to see how much we’ve improved it.

(Juniper actually sleeps in the back corner up here, right behind that chimney column. It’s just outside our bedroom, and I’ve hung blackout curtains around the corner to give her a dark place to nap. We want to get rid of that chimney column someday, but for now it’s quite useful!)

And this is after we’d lived here for a bit, and installed a vintage rattan hanging chair.

At some point I got super sick of the light yellow paint in here, and painted the walls and ceiling a nice bright white. I think I used Benjamin Moore’s Chantilly Lace. I also built a fake fireplace on the other side of the room to cover up the access door. But other than piling my plants near the window, this part of the room didn’t get much love.

That had to change when we had Juniper, though. The kneehigh railing wasn’t even tall enough to attach a baby gate to, so it was definitely not child- (or adult-) safe. But I struggled with a solution due to the window placement. The solution for the people who built the original railing was just to tie the railing into the bottom of the windowsill, which is why the railing was so low.

Nope, I didn’t dust before I took this shot:

My solution was to go all the way with the railing, from floor to ceiling. Yes, it’s kind of awkward that it’s in front of the window. But it beat any alternatives I could come up with.

Speaking of my solution, I’m pretty proud of my patch job on the windowsill. It went from this:

To this:

To this:

Imperfect as it is, I’m really happy with it, especially since I have never done anything like this before, and I had no idea how I was going to fix it at first. Some googling led me to this post about tricks to match old trim, and so I tried the tip about using base cap to match a window sill. (Actually a window “stool,” I learned.)

Once I figured out what base cap was, I realized I had some scraps in my garage, and with a lot of fiddling around, I was able to cut and glue together a decent patch for my window stool. I don’t think anyone but me will ever notice the patch unless I point it out. It’ll be our little secret.

The railing itself is constructed from 2x2s, a 4×4 for the corner upright, a 1×3 at the top, and a 1×2 at the bottom. At one point I had an idea about how I could basically construct the whole thing outside, and then bring it inside and install it, but I ended up having to construct it in the room because it wouldn’t have fit through the doors.

So I cut, primed, and painted all of the pieces in the garage and the yard, and then brought them in and screwed and nailed them all together. I should say “we,” because I had lots of help from Steven and my parents.

The simple vertical railing design was a practical decision, because I knew I needed to get it done as quickly as possible. But I was worried it would have too much of a jail/cage vibe with just vertical rails. So I added the plant windows for a little extra flair. Picky-as-hell me searched forever for the perfect hanging plant pots for the openings. I swear I looked at every shop I could think of, in person and online. I finally found these brass ones in a local shop (EcoVibe Home, though these aren’t on their website).

One thing I found really useful for this project was paint matching! I took a piece of the old railing I had deconstructed to Home Depot, and had them match the paint in Behr alkyd semi-gloss enamel. I was skeptical, but it’s a perfect match for the window frame and mouldings in the room.

Another reminder of the before:

Somehow the space actually feels bigger. Which doesn’t make sense intuitively considering it’s now chopped in half. I can’t explain it.

In real life, I did have to recently make a small tweak in here. Yes, we do have two rattan chairs, one in Juniper’s nursery, and one up here. I’m not obsessed with them, I swear. Inspired by the one my grandparents had, I got the one pictured above at a vintage shop several years back. But then I inherited the one from my grandparents, and put it in Juniper’s room. Over the last couple of months we realized that it is constructed slightly differently than this one and isn’t holding up as well. The second time I found a tiny rusty nail on the floor of Juniper’s nursery was when I decided to switch them.

So now the upstairs looks more like this:

Obviously the cat approves, and Steven fits into the other one better, which is larger, so it was a good switch. The only downside was untying, then re-doing the macrame chain cover on the one in the nursery, but that’s done now, too.

The last tweak I’ll have to make up here will be to add a baby gate at the top of the stairs. Other than that, I’m calling this space done!