I'll have to save some of the other goings-on around these parts for future posts. For now, I wanted to put down this last weekend's major project. For months now, Kate and I have been dealing with our weakening stairway. A couple of the steps had already broken off and about half of them were creaking, shifting, or otherwise making threats to fall apart. Suffice it to say that neither of us were comfortable climbing or descending the stairs (leastwhys not without guide-wires or a parachute). We tried making several temporary repairs, driving long screws at angles into the loose steps or installing L-braces to shore up the shifty stairs. Ultimately though, the whole stairwell needed to be replaced.
Enter my Dad, professional handyman and master woodcrafter. (Okay, that MIGHT be overstating things a bit, but it's pretty close.) ;-) Dad offered to come up to Fort Collins to re-do all the stairs for us. How could we say 'no?' After a couple of aborted attempts, Dad made it up here this weekend all prepped to get the job done. My sister Dianna and her new baby Everest also tagged along for a visit and to help out.
(Have I mentioned that my sister's baby was born on December 31st? I haven't? How careless of me! My mother has created a great web shrine to Everest so you can just pop over there to have a look-see!)
Anyway, here's how the weekend played out...
These two pictures show what the stairs looked like prior to the reconstruction. Notice how a number of the treads are at very bad angles or shored up with braces. A disaster waiting to happen.
When Dad and Dianna showed up, we jumped right into things. First step was to rip out all the carpet of the old stairs. I excelled at this task but destruction was always easier than construction for me. :-)
Dianna handled the sanding of the risers for the steps.
We pulled off the steps two or three at a time in order to give us room to work with. Here you can see that the very top step is installed and we've pulled off steps below it.
Dad handled all of the cutting and trimming of steps and risers...
...But we all took turns partnering up to install the actual steps, as these next pictures show:
Here you can see the first two steps with the riser in between. Yay! It's working out!
I tried to get Everest to help us out with some of the work, but he really didn't want to.
So we just let him sleep through the whole thing. :-)
One scary moment occurred when one of the weaker steps broke under Dianna's feet! Luckily, she was holding onto both railings at the time so she wasn't hurt at all.
But we now realized that this reconstruction was well-timed because the remaining stairs were obviously falling apart and would have collapsed very soon anyhow.
Dianna found it amusing that at one point I was in the kitchen prepping dinner while she and Dad were doing all the heavy work! ;-)
By well after dark, we had about half the steps installed and decided to call it a night and finish the rest in the morning. Here, Rune and Chiral (who had been locked away the whole day) aren't too sure they approve of this change to their play area...
The next morning, we jumped back into work as soon as we could...
We made excellent progress...
And before we knew it, we were on the final step!
And then by late afternoon, the new stairs were complete! Hurrah!
At this point, there's still some touch-up and finishing to do, but Kate and I want to take care of that ourselves. Dad and I want to cover up the back with some drywall or sheetrock since it's a little rough from the underside right now...
...but we're planning on maybe taking a day in Spring Break to finish that off.
In the meantime, Kate and I love the new stairs. They are solid under our feet and don't shift or wobble when we walk on them. It's an exponential improvement over what we had before and we are indescribably grateful to my Dad and sister for getting this put together for us. We feel so much safer using the stairs then we ever did before so a great big THANK YOU! to Dad and Dianna!!
Thanks so much for reading and I hope you're having a great day! :-)
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