Banister Makeover Part 1 - Sanding
The next couple of post will detail various aspects of our banister makeover as we work on it and will mostly just have pictures with short explanations. Our plan is to stain the railing a dark almost black color and to paint the spindles white. Here are some before pictures: As you can see, our banisters are very old. Sanding is a very important step. You'll especially want to sand off the gloss coat whether that be varnish, polyurethane or something else because that will prevent the stain from absorbing into the wood. I've been doing must of the heavy sanding with our random-orbit sander. This was a very messy job with dust flying everywhere. That's why I'm wearing goggles and a respirator mask. My wife started to sand the places that I wasn't able to reach by hand. Once I finish using the power sander, I'll help do this as well. Our plan is to finish all of our sanding tonight after work and tomorrow, we'll start staining.
