Once, our house was split into two, with a partition at the top of the first flight of stairs. I took this down over the bank holiday weekend, hoping to find the original bannister etc sandwiched between the hardboard skins (classy stuff huh?) but unfortunately all I found was a
2 x 2 frame. Cue a partial rebuild of the stairs.As an aside, best advice is not to start a job like this on a bank holiday unless you already know for sure you have everything you need (but you knew that anyway didn't you?). The selection of stair parts in the likes of Wickes/B&Q etc is very limited and about twice the price of the BM or a stair specialist.
I can't get hold of a match for all the parts (at least not without spending stupid money on tooling charges etc), but I hope things will blend together with the components I have (/shall have, when the order comes in).
The original handrail is mahogany or similar (circa 1877) and is still there for the main run up from the hallway, so that will stay. Installing the partition involved cutting this vertically along its length for the top 2 feet or so, so there will be fun and games patching that up. The new handrails will be sapele (ie pretend mahogany), so the challenge will be to finish them all the same way so that even if the shape is different, the colour/texture won't clash too much. It seems pretty clear that I'll have to rub down the original parts to get some kind of uniform finish, so that should be fun.
I don't think the existing surface is shiny enough to be french polish, but could easily be wrong on that. It looks more like it's been waxed but that could be from years of rubbing the rail as hands run along it (and maybe a bit of polishing).
So: How did the Victorians treat and finish this kind of thing and what would be the best approach to take (ideally using things I can source easily)? (I've been all over Google on this and no real joy so far.)