Derailing and Railing

We didn't get much done this week, because over last weekend one of Goldie's lumps -- all Labradors develop lumps, it just seems to be in the breed -- got very large and red, and so we took her to the vet, then to the canine oncologist, and then yesterday she had surgery to remove a mast cell tumour.

So we've been a little distracted this week. She's doing OK, and after trying to do her normal stuff and discovering it hurt, she mostly spent the day sleeping on the kitchen floor. I gave her an ice pack and tucked it up on her incision, which really helped her calm down and rest.

In the meantime, we got started on the railing installation. We'd measured one section already, so we rechecked those measurements and cut it to length with a hacksaw.

The ends get cleaned up and then painted with touch-up paint (we have a spray can of the stuff that Economy Lumber gave us).

The really, really fussy part was measuring to install the post brackets. It's a delicate balance between what code requires and what looks weird.

We did have a minor problem with torx bits just breaking apart on the first couple of posts. What solved that was that I went to the store and got 20 new bits, at which point everything settled down. (Also, it helped to drill larger holes for the bracket screws.)

We got most of the straight railings done today -- a couple have to wait until the right attachments come in, since we did not get around to reordering those until yesterday. Tomorrow we can do some rakes.

posted by ayse on 09/08/12