Updating 50s staircase

[Aloysius32]

Hi, I've been reading through the forums the last few days and it has definitely inspired me to be more hands on with DIY.

We're in a 1950s ex council house at the moment and want to change the banister over from wood to spindles on a budget.

The idea is that I take the hard board panels off, create a wider space where the panels were seated in the handrail and the bottom and then going to make some spindle type things to go inbetween them.

As you can see, all has gone well until I started taking the top panel off and came across what can be seen in image 3.

Any ideas why this is like it is please? Will it be ok to get thinner board to cover this gap and carry on with the stair plan?

Many thanks.

 

[ree]

There's no context for pic 3. can you stand back and do a few more pics from both sides?

Instead of routing out the slot in the hand rail you could use scotia mouldings on either side of the spindles - or stringer rails below the hand rail and on top of the stringer.
You can turn spindles but they can also be bought locally or google.