the manchester chamber of commerce railngs

 sam finished the new manchester, vt chamber of commerce/welcome center railings yesterday by adding the 'handicap access' railings.  they needed to be simple and uncluttered, yet strong and light.  he used 1.25" square tubing with center supports and side braces to the wood posts.  there are little plant hangers on the side supports to hang plants on in the summer.

 nice little detail on the ends of the rails and a tricky connection to the stone and concrete work.  the support sytem will be paved over soon.

one of the modified 'greek key' end elements

a fine job on the building renovations by bill drunsic, the owner, teresa findeisin, architecture, along with dan scarlotta of vermont traditional builders, wells, vermont, who headed up the construction.

a new railing project

jim and i pretty much finished up a new railing project at stratton mountain today. sam and jim had installed all but one of the 10 new steel sections that sam fabricated last week and today, we cut, fit and installed the wooden handrails and metal post caps ... glad that's done ... of the twenty cuts, 7 we're angled definitely, and few of the others were square because the posts were installed when the house was built oh, 20 years or so ago, there were almost no two angles or handrail ends the same ... and that involved almost uncountable trips up and down the stairs to the chop saw on the porch .... my legs were humming by the time we were finished ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
view from below ... a definite design change from the original railing below ... our job was to update the existing sort of a 'swiss chalet' look
a little more contemporary and timeless now ...
like always, we started with sam's cad drawing,
from which we made templates on the cnc
and constructed the 10 sections
we did some test fitting and minor adjustments
before we painted them at the metal shop
and made a metal post cap for the clients' approval ...
next we made and finished the recycled chestnut handrails
and cut them to fit today ... tedious, fussy fitting and lots of cuts, but they all fit great in the end.
the masons from brickwerks were working today, putting a new stone face on the fireplace, and when they are finished, we will build and install the two cabinets in the photshopped mockup below. the cabinets are a shortened version of one of a pair we made about 7 years ago. wanna see a bigggg house ... check that link ... the cabinet in that photo is 5' wide and 10' high ... these will be about 54 x 85 .. the post about the tv bracket was to work out the details for the cabinet on the right ... we are also coming down the home stretch on a recycled chestnut table for the dining area of that same house ... more on that later ... all for now ...