Staircase Balustrade Extension

The brief: The staircase balustrade for the new sections of stairs and landings needed to match the existing balustrades below.

This project was commissioned by Laxcon Construction. They had extended the main staircase of a listed building in central London from the fourth to the fifth floor and the staircase balustrade for the new sections of stairs and landings needed to match the existing balustrades below. A short section of the original balustrade where it used to terminate on the fourth floor was provided for us to work from, to achieve a genuine match the list of special components required was quite impressive:

• The main hoops and core rails were produced in the nearest metric equivalents to the originals as these were within acceptable tolerances. The scroll work and circles were forged in imperial sizes to ensure they retained the same visual weight as the originals
• The features between the rings were cast in sg iron by a specialist foundry.
• The flower detailing in the centre was cast in brass using the lost wax process by another specialist foundry.
• The brackets were a mix of custom forge work and more specialist castings.
• The brass banding and the hand rails were extruded especially for this project using tooling produced from technical drawings provided by us.

The balustrade included some challenging shapes including two sharp corners, of which one had a three step rise, and the main curve visible in the image and we are very pleased with the overall result.
All components are assembled into the final balustrade with the use of BSW setscrews and the handrails are butted up and pinned together as per the original work.

The final finish on the steel work is black paint, initially wet sprayed at our works and followed by a couple of hand painted coats on site to go some way towards the multitude of paint layers on the original work. The brass handrails had a patina applied before being polished and lacquered to achieve an old handled look.
Fixings into the Portland stone staircase itself are drilled and chiselled into the side of the stone and secured with epoxy resin.