My Very Own Mending Wall

"Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

      What I was walling in or walling out..."

                                                              -Robert Frost     

The stone wall on Robert Frost's New Hampshire Farm described in"Mending Wall"

In his meticulously crafted 1914 blank verse poem, Robert Frost challenged the virtues of the 17th century proverb "good fences make good neighbors."  While sound arguments certainly can be made for and against this commonly referenced adage, modern day U.S. building code does not lend itself to the same spirited debates.  In today's litigation-driven society, its the code way or the highway. As such, I now find myself tasked with designing and building a railing for the exercise loft and stairs.

I spent some time researching building codes as they apply to both deck and stair railings...to say the regulations are a bit daunting would be an understatement.  The more code I read, the more it became evident to me why so many homes are built in a cookie-cutter fashion--its not only cheaper, but also easier to just repeat what you do in every home to ensure everything meets code.

Barf

The image below is why architects and engineers are awesome...they push the limits of design and construction materials to come up with super cool design solutions that shatter the status quo and still comply with building codes.  A great example of such innovation is the cable railing.

Cable railings provide a minimally obstructed view while simultaneously achieving the safety objectives of a code-compliant railing system

For my project, a cable railing is the perfect solution..it achieves the open, minimalist, non-cookie cutter feel I am seeking while still meeting building code requirements for safety necessary for the loft and stairs.  In a nutshell, building code requirements for railings revolve around preventing small children from getting there head stuck between balustrades and clumsy people from taking a header over the top rail. Below is a nice--albeit overly simplified--schematic that illustrates these guiding principles:

These are just some of the high points of basic design code for railings.

In short, there are A LOT of code requirements that govern railing design and it took me a significant amount of time and consideration to make sure that my design was "conforming."

Of course, the easiest way to get my railing finished would have been to hire a subcontractor to do it...but what fun would that be?  The next easiest option would have been to order a pre-fabricated cable railing kit custom ordered to my project's specifications.  Initially, this was my plan...a quick Google search for "cable railing kits" yields 18,400,000 results (in only 0.52 seconds, no less...way to go Google).

As I began gathering quotes for my project, I came to a painful realization...CABLE RAILINGS ARE FU#&*NG EXPENSIVE!!!  Depending upon the design and materials used, cable railings on average run between $150 and $250 per linear foot!  Gulp.  Can you say "total rip off!"

Over $150 per linear foot?  I may have been born during the day, but I wasn't born yesterday!  Whoever is selling these cable railing kits must be the same people who sell printer ink...there is just no way these things should cost that much! There is so much less actual material than a normal railing system....I guess what they say is true:  Less really is more!  (more expensive)

So while I may want my project to look cool, I'm not prepared to take a second mortgage to pay for it.   Clearly, there must be a cheaper way to achieve this look.  After a considerable amount of research, I arrived at the conclusion that fabricating my own cable railing could be done for a fraction of the price ($30 per linear foot, to be exact).  As such, I set forth refining my design and figuring out exactly what materials I would need to pull this off.

In truth, the hardest part of this phase of my project has been finding the time to actually work on it...which is why I haven't posted anything since Thanksgiving.  Over the past few months, I have been slowly chipping away at this project....30 minutes here, 45 minutes there, etc, etc.  Unfortunately, there have been several multi-week stretches in which I haven't been able to even lay eyes on this project, let alone make any actual progress.  Consequently, this phase of my project has dragged on much, much longer than I would prefer...but such is the reality of a weekend warrior like myself.  With any luck, I should be able to finish this thing in the next month or so...but I'm not going to count my chicks until they hatch.

So if I don't finish before tax day, stay tuned and Happy Easter!