Crafting Savories: Upcycled Stair Rails / Spindles

What to do when gifted a large batch of wooden stair rails / spindles?

I think practically every one knows that I am a crazy craft nut, so much so that even my neighbours are on the look out for items for me to re-purpose. My neighbour across the road is a contractor and was doing a porch rebuild. He decided to salvage the porch rails that weren't rotting and thought of me to gift them too. Holy cow, what a win fall.

Here is what I have made so far:

After pre-cutting the tops to stagger the heights of each stair rail, I drilled pilot holes in the bottoms and inserted Dollar store dowel rods. The dowels are to hold the rails up in the soil. Each house is of course acrylic clear coated, so are the dowels and the bottom of the rails to protect from moisture.

The birdhouses are from the Dollar Store. My paint job is a whimsical homage to beach huts.

$20 Console Table

Another Spindle project the hubby and I worked on together is a console table for our hallway.

Material's:
6 stair rails
2 - 6" x 2" lumber cut to 11" long each (we used left over wood from our car port tear down)
12" x 48" pine project panel ($16.99 Homedepot.ca)
1 - 2" x 2" piece of lumber cut to 2 - 40" pieces ($2.99 Homedepot.ca)
Kreg Jig
2.5" pocket hole screws
Gorilla Glue
wood filler
paint and or stain

Assembly:
We removed 4" off each spindle so our assembled console height is 30".
Glue and screw in from the bottom each center spindle in the middle of each 11" 6 x 2.
Glue and screw each additional spindle in place.
Add the 40" skirting piece to the top of the spindle.

We used the Kreg Jig to make pocket holes to attach these pieces.

Placing the table top surface on the floor, we marked out where the frame would be attached on the under side than flipped the project back over and drilled from the table top side down.

I have more projects planned, stay tuned.

Other Ideas Available on the Web:

Here are some of the cool upcycled possibilities using stair rails found on the web. Any rails would work for most of these project, many are done using spindles from chairs or head boards. I think I want to do all of them.