NRE, you’ve really taken your house out of the Spanish dungeon! It looks great.
Railless glass is surprisingly affordable and actually quite easy for a DIY homeowner to install. We used them for all our railings, inside and out.
Here’s what you do
- Order posts online ($129/post)
- Attach posts to deck using included lag screws
- Carefully measure for glass based on actual dimensions.
- Order 3/8" thick tempered glass panels online (approx $160/panel)
- Slide the glass panels into the slots in posts.
It sounds easy, and it is. For us the total cost was about $75 per lineal foot, which is significantly less than what we were quoted for cable railings.
They’re beautiful and surprisingly low maintenance. We’ve had them for two years and I’ve only washed the deck glass once.
Maybe I’ll open a flicker account and post photos.
@sherpa - please do! Where did you order your glass?
@sherpa - can I assume from the price you quoted that you didn’t get low iron glass? If so, do you notice the tint of the glass when you look through it?
Wow, thanks @sherpa. Question 2: do they also sell the posts or did you get them elsewhere?
@notrichenough - Correct, not low iron. We don’t notice any tint at all.
@BunsenBurner - we bought them online from a company in British Columbia. I think their website was panoramicdeckpost dot com but the website doesn’t seem to be working now. There are several companies that make them, primarily from Canada.
All of them are compliant with the International Building Code, so that isn’t an issue. The vendors are happy to provide the engineering reports that the local building officials will likely request.
Much appreciated,@sherpa! Thanks!
The owner/manager of the kitchen cabinet company came by to get a punch list of missing pieces and do a quick QC of the work. He opened every door and drawer and adjusted anything that was not to his standard. I would not have even noticed those minor things. Turns out, folks across the street used them in the past to redo their kitchen. He thought they referred us to them. We simply found their showroom while tasting wine in the Garage Winery District, got a “tour” of the wood shop, and Mr. was convinced.
@notrichenough love the cable railing. Especially the way it opens up the upper balcony area with lots of light. It brings the eye up to see whats going on up there. Guess you will have to decorate nice up there and keep it neat and tidy!! A sitting chair, cool floor lamp and a stavk of books. Possibly a telescope for some decor.
But, to be brutally honest…and thats what we all need to do to help each other on our home improvements…the front door seems a bit dated in style for the house. Maybe it looks better in person.
@coralbrook Thanks.
Yeah, it’s not as contemporary as the rest of the house. The mission/craftsman-style glass is maybe not the best fit. I don’t think it’s dated necessarily, the local door store currently sells something very close to this.
When we got it, I don’t think we realized how far down the contemporary scale the house would turn out to be. We were pretty much at bare studs through the entire house when the door went in, if we had waited until the end we might have gone a different way.
The main reason we got it, though, was our builder had it sitting in his barn from a previous job where he wound up not using it. Thermatru doors in this style with two sidelites are going for around $2500 IIRC… he gave it to us for $500. So to save $2000 we compromised a little bit. Seemed worth it at the time.
The neighbors who have seen it seem to like it, although who knows how honed their design sense is. Not changing it at this point. 
The door is not spectacular, but when NRE paints it that nice color… it will look so much better. 
In other news, I was at the doctors’ office today, and it is undergoing a remodel. The floor made me speechless. It was LVT, but looked so much like real wood! It was gorgeous. I asked what brand it was, but the staff had no idea. I gave them instructions to find that out by my next appointment.
@notrichenough
For $500 that door is gorgeous 
Give the front of the door a really fun contemporary color and call it a day
Haha, exactly!
The outside of the door looks a bit dingy because we never cleaned it after getting out of the barn where it had been sitting for a few years. When we get some paint on it, it will look much better.
Lol!! Oh yeah. It is a masterpiece for that price!
Flip update, for those interested in these things:
Now down to $475K, they have to be really sweating now. It’s now almost two years since the place was purchased.
Somehow the original listings from when it was listed at $725K-$649K no longer show up in the price history.
Makes what @coralbrook does all the more remarkable.
Wow… I wonder what happened there? Greed kills. Bad design is my wild guess. Photos don’t always show the whole story.
Oh, it has been apparently rented?
“ed in 2017 to a single family home with first floor master and 2 additional bedrooms up. Needs some TLC from recently vacated year round tenants. Great opportunity for $2400 p/week in seasonal rental income.”
Need TLC after renters is a euphemism for the place is trashed.
Interesting, I didn’t notice that. I guess they decided getting a little income was better than letting it sit there.
Needs TLC one year after a total makeover, though? You are right, the tenants must have been pretty rough on it.
What a disaster for the owners.
It’s pretty far from my house or I’d go visit it to see what happened to it.