Hiya this is my first post so sorry if it's in the wrong place.

On the outside front steps of our house, the render on the stone 'bannisters' are all cracked and knackered. On one side of the steps the bannister is straight, and on the other side it's curved. It runs in a curve up the stairs and is also curved across the top of it if you get what I mean.

One pic shows the cracked straightside 'bannister' of our house, the other pic is not my house but has the same curved 'bannister'

I am quite a handy person but no experience of doing this sort of render.

I would really appreciate some basic advice like answers to these quick questions:

* what render do I use? cement? what with?
* anything non-obvious that I have to do in surface prep?
* any good tips for doing the curved section by hand? what are best tools to use?
* are these things called bannisters?

thanks in advance for any help, cheers, Anthony
Hackney, London

We would call that, Coping stones which you can get in various widths, concrete cast.
You can get once or twice weathered, once weathered is nearly flat, slight slope.
Twice weathered is slanted both sides.
You could also cast them in situ, quite a bit more work involved, I wont go into the details as I dont know how competent you would feel as its quite a steep cast, the material will slump a lot, but basically you would be starting with a stiff mix, working up to a trowelable finish, the top edges would be finished with a round edged trowel.
I wouldnt advise doing the last method now, as temperatures are forecast to drop, you would need plenty of wintermix and cover well, and those no gaurantee the frost wont kill it.
If you go on Bradstones site, you might find some stone copings to match, if not they can make the stones to suit, but would charge you for making the mould if they dont have any in their stores.
In my opinion the copings are beyond repair and you will be forever patching them.

Is that second photo in Victoria park? I did a garden there is summer and that looks like the spit of the house we were working on. They had the painters there at the time doing the front and their coping stone was pretty wrecked, but not s bad as yours. They were just using an exterior masonry filler, then sanding it down by eye to the original curve.