2013 February 17 | Beneath My Heart

Today, I want to show you how we built our on newel post for our new staircase.

If you have followed my blog for long, you know that I love to add old house character and charm to our newer home.

We have been building a two story addition to our home over the past few years, and I knew that I wanted a thick, chunky newel post for our new staircase.

Like this one…

I would have loved to have scored an antique newel post, but I couldn’t find one in our budget. So I showed some pictures of ones that I liked to my husband, Cy, and he built one for me! Smile

Here are the steps he took to build it.

He started with a 4×4 post that we already had in our barn. {As you can see, he cut into the first step to build the newel post. I would describe how to do that, but every set of steps is different, and you may or may not want your newel post coming out of your first step.}

He added a 2×4 to one side {although he said you wouldn’t have to do that.}

Next, he wrapped the 4×4 with 1×8 pieces of poplar board. Make sure the pieces are level.

Here is what it looked like before he added the final 1×8 poplar board…

Next we added a lot of trim work to get the look we wanted. You can take a lot of liberty in how much trim you use, what type of trim you use, and where you use it.

It is a preference thing.

We trimmed the middle of the newel post with 1/4 inch by 2 inch poplar trim pieces. Then we added a trim piece on top of that. Next, we placed a square 1/2 inch piece of birch plywood to the top and trimmed it with round trim.

Cy always added wood glue to the trim pieces before he nailed them with a finish nailer.

For the top, we bought a fence post cap from Lowe’s.

We originally planned to use the whole cap, but it looked a little weird when we placed it on top of our newel post. So Cy took the bottom of the fence post cap off {see above} and just used the top for our newel post.

I liked it much better that way.

The bottom of the newel post is made of 1×12 pine boards and some decorative trim.

Before painting, we made sure to fill all the nail holes with wood filler and sand them smooth.

We also filled any gaps between each wood piece with white paintable caulk. This is a VERY important step to give it that finished look.

I noticed when looking at this next picture, that we added another piece of small trim underneath the square piece of wood. As we were building it, we could tell something was missing. That extra piece of trim really finished it off.

Here is a view of the top…

The bottom…

I love my new “old” newel post! It’s exactly what I was wanting.

We still have a few other things to do to our steps before they are completely finished. Just detail stuff.

I’ve always loved the look of a staircase in a home. Won’t it be fun to decorate next Christmas?! Smile

If you like this project, I would love for you to share it. Thanks!

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I’m linking to…

Two of my sweet blog friends, Sandra from Sawdust Girl and Cassity from Remodelaholic, have also built their own newel posts. To see each of their projects, click on the pictures below.