Loft Railing

We made a quick day trip up to the camp yesterday. The main purpose of the trip was to deliver our new sleeper sofa. When I designed the shabin, I used an IKEA sofa as a reference for the living area furniture. I assumed we would buy the Ektorp corner sofa with a pull out bed. A corner sofa would provide the maximum amount of seating in a small area. A pull out bed would give us the second sleeping area we needed. Given the small proportions of the shabin, and the tight tolerances for things like loft stairs, the exact size of the sofa became critical. I was quite dismayed when I recently went to order the sofa and learned it had been discontinued.



Craigslist came through, however. I found this beauty for sale less than a mile from home, and it only ran me $100. The left side pulls out into a full size bed, and the right side is an ultra comfortable chaise lounge. Lizz claims it is the most comfortable piece of furniture we own. The sofa is in pretty good condition. The fabric is a bit faded but sturdy and the pattern is not something we would not have chosen for ourselves. In other words, it is perfect for a cabin in the woods.



Here we see the tight tolerance between the couch and the loft stairs. While we were up there, I also started on safety railings for the loft. I decided to use steel cables for the railings. Cables would be strong and the least obtrusive with regards to light and air movement. I also figured that they would look pretty cool. I purchased most of the materials from E-Rigging, who I will say were extremely quick fulfilling my order and much cheaper than buying from Lowes.



The first step was to carefully measure all the mount points for the cables. That was a bit time consuming. Since everything up in the loft runs at an angle, I got to use my 9th grade geometry, go Pythagoras! I spaced the cables 3 1/2 inches apart, with the top cable 42 inches above the loft floor. For the cable mount points, I used #0 size lag screws with eyes as shown in the picture.



In order to maintain tension in the cables, I used large (3/8") turnbuckles rated at 2000 lbs. These have shackles on one end whose bolts are slipped through the lag screw eyes.



I used 1/8" uncoated steel cable rated at 2000 lbs. Each cable is looped through the eye end of a turnbuckle, and secured with two screw down clips.  The other end is secured in the same way on the matching eye screw. Once secured, the cable is tightened by adjusting the turnbuckle. I used galvanized steel for all the hardware, which should be perfectly fine for interior use, and is a huge savings over using stainless steel.



I think these are turning going to look great. This was just a quick day trip, so I did not have enough time to finish. I finished 8 of the 12 cables for the loft opening. I will also install a set of cables along the side of the stair opening to prevent falling in the hole from the other side.