Several of my balusters are broken or mismatched. Do I need a whole new balustrade?

Almost certainly not. We take a sound original as the pattern, turn replacements to match, and blend them into the run so it reads as one original set. That keeps the historic balustrade in the house and costs a fraction of a replacement. A full rebuild is only warranted where the original has already been lost.

My newel post is loose. Is that serious?

It is worth fixing properly and it is usually not a rebuild. In stairs of this age the original bolt through the newel works loose over decades and the whole balustrade starts to move with it, which then stresses the rail joints. Re-anchoring the newel correctly, rather than gluing or bracketing it, normally stabilises the entire run. We check the rail joints at the same time since they will have taken the strain.

St Clair, St Clair County, MI

Staircases in St Clair, MI

Name: Maceri Woodworking
Address: 33628 Bayview Dr, Chesterfield, MI, 48047, US
Telephone: (586) 823-2887
Price range: $$

The staircase in a St Clair historic-district house is usually its best single piece of joinery — a turned or carved balustrade, a substantial newel, and a hardwood rail that was made by hand. Our work here is overwhelmingly repair and restoration rather than replacement.

The failures are predictable after a hundred and forty years. Balusters break or go missing and get replaced with whatever was available, so a run often has three or four different patterns in it. Newel posts loosen where the original bolt has worked free. Handrails come apart at the ramp and easing where the sections were joined. Treads wear through in the centre and squeak against the risers. All of this is repairable, and repairing it is both cheaper and better than replacing a balustrade that cannot be bought again. We turn replacement balusters to match a surviving original so a run reads as one set, re-anchor newels properly rather than gluing them, remake handrail joints where they have opened, and repair or replace individual treads while keeping the original stringer and skirting. Where a stair has already been badly modernised — a period balustrade removed and a stock rail fitted in the seventies — we can build a replacement in the correct register for the house, taking the pattern from photographs or from surviving detail elsewhere in the building.

We assess the stair before quoting, and we quote the repair where a repair will do. Turning and joinery are done at our Chesterfield shop and matched to the original pattern.

St Clair is about twenty-one miles from our Chesterfield shop, well inside the area we cover along the river.

Staircases questions from St Clair homeowners

Several of my balusters are broken or mismatched. Do I need a whole new balustrade?: Almost certainly not. We take a sound original as the pattern, turn replacements to match, and blend them into the run so it reads as one original set. That keeps the historic balustrade in the house and costs a fraction of a replacement. A full rebuild is only warranted where the original has already been lost.
My newel post is loose. Is that serious?: It is worth fixing properly and it is usually not a rebuild. In stairs of this age the original bolt through the newel works loose over decades and the whole balustrade starts to move with it, which then stresses the rail joints. Re-anchoring the newel correctly, rather than gluing or bracketing it, normally stabilises the entire run. We check the rail joints at the same time since they will have taken the strain.