What can I do with these stair rails in my house? My kids are getting older and I'm worried that they'll either accidentally fall through the bars or slide through them on purpose for fun.

I know I could replace them completely, but that seemed like a potentially really expensive option. I was just wondering if people had any other options other than fill replacement. I had considered adding another bar in between each of the bars as a diy project but my coworker had kind of intimidated me by how difficult it would be to do and look good.

[url=https://ibb.co/nQCg39][/url]

I'm sure the actual work wouldn't be too hard (depending on your DIY abilities), but getting it to look good would be the challenge IMO. It looks like the balusters are currently centered on each tread. If so, is the distance between the balusters evenly divisible? I believe code now is that they should be on 4" spacing. You could go with 3 balusters/tread or alternate a 3/2 pattern (3 balusters on one tread, 2 on the next, 3 on the next, and so on). It will depend on how large your treads are and what will fit evenly.

Where are you located?

you can buy mesh and use zip ties if you are a cheap XOM Engineer like my FIL

it worked great for him

None of his kids died

Well, the nuclear option is to buy new rails and balusters and go with 2 balusters per tread everywhere.

Cabling to follow rise...

Plexiglas shield - strips - wide as you want...Vertical or Horizontal...

Might be better to leave as is. That way when they start climbing up the outside (and they will), they have plenty of space to get back inside instead of climbing down when they get scared.

It wouldn't be that hard to add anything, but make sure you can match the pieces first. You could always get one or two and just set it in place to determine if you like the look.

It doesn't look like you'll be about to get even spacing, so you have to decide if you are ok with a paired or even tried up look.

On the easy side, You could also get some golf netting made to the right size and secure it in, would look better than a lot of the commercial baby proofing netting anyway.

https://www.amazon.com/Roving-Cove-Safe-Rail-Protector/dp/B01AER7J3O?keywords=railing+guard&qid=1534125762&sr=8-1&ref=mp_s_a_1_1

We just installed this and it was pretty easy. There are other kinds. I have same problem and went this route.

YellAg2004 said:

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I'm sure the actual work wouldn't be too hard (depending on your DIY abilities), but getting it to look good would be the challenge IMO. It looks like the balusters are currently centered on each tread. If so, is the distance between the balusters evenly divisible? I believe code now is that they should be on 4" spacing. You could go with 3 balusters/tread or alternate a 3/2 pattern (3 balusters on one tread, 2 on the next, 3 on the next, and so on). It will depend on how large your treads are and what will fit evenly.
Where are you located?

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If you can't match the spindles you might consider a complimentary or use a simple straight or a combo in the pattern OP gives.

Just do the mesh as has been suggested in this forum. We did it with our upstairs where the bars are relatively far apart.

Kids are now 5 and 3 and we feel pretty good about them understanding so we just took it down a few weeks back. Was a mild eye sore for a while but honestly you just get use to it and don't even think about it. It then took us a while to get use to it not being there once we took it down lol.

All in all I think we spent $40-$50 and there was no drilling required so was a quick take down after being up for 4 years and house looks like it did when we bought it.


Edit: If you are kids are getting older I would strongly consider doing nothing. We did the mesh almost as much for baby heads going between bars upstairs when crawling more-so than whole body falling through. Our kids know to walk up the wall-side of the stairs and we tell them they are not to touch the bars...after putting the fear of God in them a few times, we never have an issue.

Thanks for the various inputs. My kids are (almost) 6, 4 and 2. I got through the early years basically the same way as Plano, training my kids strictly and utlizing gates to limit their unsupervised access to the stairs.

However, now we are at a stage where the oldest goes up and down as he pleases but often the 2 year old gets free reign. It wouldn't bother me so much if the 2 year old wasn't slightly clumsy and the 4/6 year olds tend to fight a lot, sometimes on the stairs. Plus we have a dog that sometimes runs up the stairs while the kids are going up and will brush past them sometimes. Add that to what I'm sure will be a temptation in the future to do crazy stuff off the stairwell (as I would have as a kid) and something like the netting makes sense. Someone mentioned leaving it wide so kids climbing on the outside can climb back in that's probably not a bad idea either. I can prevent accidental falls with a net or new bars but I can't prevent the boys just from being dumb when I'm not looking. Then again the risk of them doing something dumb isn't affected by any netting or bars I put in so it probably makes sense to just do it.

The netting probably fits my budget/skills for the moment.

I was going to type up doing this exact thing here...

I think the netting will be perfect then based on what you are needing. Obviously not the most beautiful thing but it is a good solution that is cheap and easy and not permanent. Anyone that comes over and sees the netting will completely understand why and in a few years you can just strip it off and you are good to go. I did have 2 spots i ultimately had to touch up with some paint (some light rubbing from tie downs) but the take down and touch up was done in under 30 minutes.