With the downstairs part of the porch finished, I moved on to the top. I wanted to turn this into a balcony, but with something more flamboyant than the usual newel post. This is one of those times that a dearth of half scale supplies caused me to get creative.

For the posts, I bought a piece of 5/16″ square strip wood, and cut four 1″ lengths. For finials on top, I perused the well-stocked spindle/turnings aisle at Dollhouses, Trains, and More and picked out a package of Shenandoah 3/4″ spindles. Can’t find them online so I have no idea if they’re even made anymore (if yes, they’d be Houseworks brand since Houseworks acquired Shenandoah a while back), but they’re similar to these.

Rather than cut down the spindles to give them flat bottoms, I thought it would be more stable to drill holes in the posts and glue the spindles into the holes. Geoff helped with this, using his drill press.

Here’s the basic idea. (These spindles would make good bowling pins, too!)

I painted the posts with Baked Scone, and used Mossy Green on the spindles and a skinny piece of strip wood to use as trim around the tops of the posts.

Initially I only planned to paint the trim, but after gluing it on I realized it would look better to paint the whole top of the post green, too. This would have been easier if I’d painted the tops before gluing in the spindles, but why do it the easy way when you can do it the hard way?!

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When I bought the Queen Anne rowhouse, it had pillars made out of dowels that were sort of crookedly glued onto the railings. When I pulled these off, bumpy glue spots were left behind on the railings. I sanded them but was left with not-quite-flat railings, and was concerned that the new pillars wouldn’t glue onto them nicely. So, first I glued stripwood onto the tops of the railings to make a nice flat surface.

I also cut a new porch roof since the one that came with the house also had glue globs on it, and was a bit warped. Then I got to painting the porch roof and pillars.

I thought about painting the railings with Olivewood, but in the end went with the same Baked Scone as the rest of the stairs. (Having the stairs and railings the same color as the house seems common on the San Francisco Victorians.) For the pillars, I did Mossy Green at the top and bottom with Olivewood accents on the “rings.”

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