Removing The Banister

We talked about removing the banister in our living room for a long time and a couple weeks ago I decided to see how hard it would be. It took about 5 minutes. However, the repair took much longer.

They no longer make the laminate flooring color and, even if they did, the transition strip wouldn't be wide enough to bridge the gap to the carpet,. We should have taken out the banister years ago when we got the laminate flooring or the carpet, but didn't think about it then.

The new plan was to patch the banister base and stain it to match the existing trim. Then replace the other laminate transition strips with new wood transitions stained to match the trim.

We patched the column where the banister connected to it and tried staining, but there was just too much damage and the patch was obvious so we ended up painting the bottom part of the banister. We obsessed about the paint color. We talked about painting the bookcases and the stair banister to match, but in the end we decided on the existing wall color. It looks pretty good, but will take some getting used to. However, one thing we know for sure is that we love not having the banister anymore.