Looking for basement stair railing ideas

[Wes Billups]

Here's the deal. My wife and I are starting to finish a portion of our basement and I'm stuck on how to handle the stairs.

The issue is the stairway dumps you into the center of the basement. Right now the railing is just horizontal 2x4's with a 2x4 post at the bottom going from floor to ceiling. We want to keep the railing open which presents a problem with the light switch at the bottom of the stairs. The nearest wall is 11 feet away. The only thing I can think of doing is building a floor to ceiling post at the bottom of each side of the stairs with a railing terminating into the posts.

If anyone has any examples, better ideas, plans they can share, it would be much appreciated. I did find a picture which does a poor job of showing the stairway.

Thanks,
Wes

P.S. If this is the wrong forum, feel free to relocate the post.

[Lee Schierer]

What does the switch at the bottom turn on? Hopefully there is a switch at the top that turns on the light(s) in the basement! You can locate the switch that is currently at the bottom to the top of the stairs or you can relocate the switch to the closest wall and convert it to a motion sensor type switch that will turn on as someone comes down the stairs or you can do both. The only problem with motion sensing switches is if they don't see motion, they turn the lights off after a given time period.

Unless the post is load bearing you should be able to replace it and put short posts at the bottom attached to the stair stringers to hold the railings. I would recommend carriage bolts with large washers for this attachments as screws, even lag screws tend to loosen over time.

[Wes Billups]

Lee, the switch at top and bottom control the same set of basement lights (both 3-way). It's code that you have to have both so I want to keep the bottom one. I'd like to keep the switch at the bottom of the stairs as there is no close wall location that would satisfy code requirement.

The vertical 2x4's aren't load bearing so removing them won't be an issue. I'm thinking of making one of them a floor-to-ceiling post with the switch attached and the other side a short post but not sure how that would look.

Wes

[Terry Brogan]

Put it in the side of the newel post.

[Wes Billups]

Terry, this is what I was thinking but have never seen this done. I've already scoped out the path to run the wiring underneath the stairs to get it to the post.
I'm thinking this would be the best option, since we want to keep the stairway as open as possible.

Wes

[James Rambo]

According to code (NEC) 210.70(a)(2)(c)exception: In hallway, stairways, and at outdoor entrances, remote, central, or automatic control of lighting shall be permitted.
Ofcourse this is over ruled by the athority having jurisdiction (your local inspector)

[Wes Billups]

I think I’ve decided to put the switch in the newel post. Now I’m stuck with how to handle the banister. The problem is the stairs are a prebuilt style where the steps are narrower than the opening from the first floor. This means the railing in the open area will need to die into the basement ceiling. This creates two issues.

1. How to handle the spindles in the railing as the hand rail will end before the spindles?

2. How do I transition from the hand rail with spindles to the hand rail mounted to the wall near the first floor steps?

I’ve tried to create a drawing showing the issues.

I’m hoping somebody has run into this in their own home and can show a picture of how they handled it.

Thanks,
Wes Billups