On 6/25/2014 2:30 PM, Frank wrote:
Have a flight of 10 concrete steps in the back of the house where wife
wants a wrought iron railing. First call she made got a quote of
$100/foot or $1,000 installed for powder coated wrought iron. Seems
outrageous to me. Any ideas how to proceed? How hard would it be to
buy a rail and put it in myself?

Do they have to BE wrought iron, or just look like it? About 5 yr ago I
was selling my old row house and discovered that I had some old rusted
wrought iron columns holding up an aluminum awning on the back porch and
a length of wrought iron railings that had rusted out in the front
(about 4 steps worth). I got a quote form a real wrought iron company
and it was something like 1500 which at that point was more than I
wanted to put into the house. I ended up calling a local aluminum awning
company and it turns out that they did make replacement columns. So on a
whim, I asked if they knew anything about railings and they said that
they could do that as well, although it wasn't one of their advertised
services. Altogether, the work turned out to be 1/3 of what the other
company quoted. And the railings actually look pretty close to the
originals. They didn't have all the twisty wrought iron stuff, but it
worked fine. You may want to look into that approach, esp since this is
in the back of your house.