Stairs - They Just Happened All of a Sudden

Hello crazy kids. I can't even describe to you the last nearly-two months. You would have to have lived through it to totally appreciate the insanity of it all.

Back at the end of May (like, seriously?) we completed siding on the last un-sided side of the house along with singling on the back, the re-installation of windows, the installation of an octagonal window, and the painting of much trim work outside. It was all a maximum effort put forth to get the biggest appraisal value possible as part of a refi effort.

Well, I'm happy to report that the appraiser came and the value of the house turned out to be very favorable. But our initial elation turned sour when the underwriter came back and told us they wanted a railing on the stairs before they would close the loan.

Mike, already exhausted from his exterior efforts, was not happy. But rather then put up something half-ass and temporary to satisfy the loan folks, he decided that he wanted to do it up right.

The stairs from the first floor to the second have always caused us issue. They were temporary to begin with, I spilled paint on the treads that could not be cleaned off, every step squeaked - loudly, and to top it all off, we had all the materials to create a railing - the railing, the post, the balusters - everything already purchased years ago and just sitting in the basement.

"We just need to do it," Mike said. "And then it'll be done."
I couldn't argue. The trouble was, it needed to be done in about two weeks... counting the 4th of July holiday. (Which bought us a few extra and much-needed days.)

The day after we heard from the mortgage company, we were ripping off the old stairs. The first step, (ha ha, thus begins the stair-themed puns) was to take off everything so that the treads could be sanded and re-stained and the risers could be painted. (They were previously just clear-coated, which didn't work well for us. They showed scuff marks like crazy and couldn't be cleaned.)

Risers Off

Since we still needed to access the upstairs, the next step needed to be done quickly. (And yes, on a couple of occasions, we just had to plop the treads on just so we could oh-so carefully walk upstairs.) Second Step - trim. Once all the treads were off, Mike and I carefully marked and cut a piece of wood for the wall-side trim. Some tricky cuts and angles there... Tense moments, for sure.

Third Step, eliminate the squeak by building stronger stairs. Mike cut treads out of pine board to underlay the oak ones and caulked/nailed them in.

Pine Underlayment

Mike also cut a hole in the bottom one for our railing post - already in stock - and installed it in place. Walking those stairs without squeak for the first time was amazing... so quiet! The increased height of the pine boards also made for a more natural stepping height, especially at the top of the stairs, where stepping from the old landing to the second floor had previously been an unnaturally larger step.

Step 4: Exterior Trim - more measuring, marking, and cutting. And, while all this building was going on, Mike and I were simultaneously painting and staining treads and risers. Within a couple of days, they were also all ready to be put on... Or at least ready to be tested and tweaked. Most of the risers needed to be trimmed due to the newly decreased, trimmed-out length requirements.

Stairs with Exterior Trim and Treads Back On

Treads and Risers, Painted and Stained, Not Nailed On Yet

Step 5: Paint the trim. It's self explanatory. Trim was painted in the same color as the risers... which, by the way, I somehow screwed up on. I have no clue what color white that is, but it's not the white I thought it was. I thought this was the antique white you see in the wall stripes.

*No, that's not wallpaper, that's paint. Yes, I painted perfect stripes on my hallway. How? Painters tape. Painted one color, let set. Marked plumb points at top and bottom of the wall, taped from point to point with 2" tape for a nice straight line. Put a small piece of tape next to ceiling to floor line of tape to gauge distance. Marked for next piece of tape. And so on and so forth until the whole wall was taped. Then, I painted the next color - two coats. I removed the tape immediately after the second coat, pulling slowly and evenly to prevent drips and marks. Came out beautifully! Most people think it's wall paper.

*Note - I ended up painting after failing horribly at trying to put up wallpaper. That stuff sucks!

Trim Painted

 Once the trim was painted, all the risers and treads were nailed on for good.

Step 6: Fix the landing. Mike cut and stained oak boards for the top landing, further evening out the landing to 2nd floor step height. It feels like a natural step now! (Although for a while it was a little weird... we both kept high stepping like idiots! We were both too used to the old, too-high step.)

Step 7: Install railings. Yes, railings. Just to be safe, in addition to the hallway-side railing, which would die out into the stairway ceiling halfway up, we purchased a cheapo wood rail for the wall-side. No one would be able to say we didn't have a railing on this set of stairs!

Step 8: Install balusters. This was a painstaking process, but didn't take Mike too long once he did a couple of them. Measure, cut, install, repeat - all the way up to the ceiling, where the railing and balusters die out. They look beautiful - and we had plenty in our basement stock to do the job, plus a few extras.

After those were up, the final step was to stain all remaining wood pieces, the two railings and the post. Those were all stained in place. A little stinky for my liking, but at least we could open all the windows and fan it out.

Balusters

All Railed Out

And it was done in the knick of time! Mike finished on a Sunday. The following day, the appraiser came back out, photographed the improvement, and made his report to the mortgage company.

Of course, we're still waiting to close due to some other technicalities... but luckily, it's not on us. It's all on their side. (Phew) 

Now for a much deserved break from the house - although, the lawn needs to be mowed, weeds need to be whacked.... A break is never really a break.

Going Up and Going Down

Amazing what the impending end of summer can accomplish for you. In our case, we had a visit on Sunday from Timmy, our carpenter. He was all set and ready to build those front steps. Wow. Ok. Mike dug out the rest of the decking planks from the basement, some lumber lock screws, and some joist hangers, and we were ready to rock - no additional purchases needed.

A few quick hours later and we had the stairs we'd been waiting for... for four years. (Hard to believe we started this porch four years ago, aint it?)

 

Next up, we'll have to purchase the two railings, two posts, and six 6" post end caps. I think I'm giving up on my dream of having solar lit post end caps. They just don't exist in 6" for a reasonable price. (4" solar lit ones are under $20 at the DeepHo - but we don't have 4" posts.) I just want ye-old regular end caps to finish off this job! Those plus a little bit more trim... a little stain on these front steps... a little bit more lattice work... and this job is done.

While Timmy was over, Mike talked to him about the kitchen roof. As you'll recall, it's been tarped since March when we discovered that it was leaking on the back wall when we were re-re-doing the kitchen in early spring. Well, needless to say it can't be tarped all winter. The tarp is in fact, fading fast as you can imagine. So Timmy took some measurements and he'll see if he can order the roofing through his work. He'll be getting back to us on that - the roof job will need to be completed before weather gets cold. Rubber roof cannot be done under 50 degrees. It's scientifically impossible.

Now that we've gone down (stairs), we move on to up - the chimney. The chimney guys will be back this Friday night and plan to go up another 10 feet. So, in preparation, Mike loaded the scaffolding with blocks and removed the siding from another 10' up the house.

Mikey on the scaffolding

Mike tears off siding up another 10 feet.

 Meanwhile, in the basement, Mike cemented in the top part of the chimney hook up (or whatever you call it.) And as for me... in the bathroom... my closet organizer arrived on Monday, but Mike did not have an opportunity to install it. I must admit, I'm dying to organize. I'm hoping he'll be able to do it tonight, since tomorrow we'll be having friends over and Friday night is chimney night. BUSY!

Chimney Holes, Stair Stringers, and Other Surprises

All of a sudden and out of nowhere - chaos! Yesterday evening, the chimney guys arrived to begin construction. Yes, yesterday evening. They arrived around 5pm and worked until nearly 9pm. After those few hours, we had two brand new holes in the basement wall:

 And outside, we have the start of a chimney nearing ground level:

 

Bad news, some of our materials are the wrong size... the liners do not fit. Mike's going to have to make a call and see if we can get them exchanged. Once that's taken care of, the guys will return and it's up, up, and away with the rest of it.

Believe it or not, while the chimney guys were working, our neighbor stopped by and told us that our carpenter told him that Home Depot had the stair stringers we needed for the porch for just $15 each. He was going over there and offered to pick them up for us... uh, ok? And sure enough, he was back around 8pm with four stair stringers. So... the porch is all of a sudden happening again. After the stair stringers, we really don't need to purchase much more. The biggest ticket items will be the two railings and the 6 post end caps. Which I suppose I'll be ordering soon?

If that wasn't enough, I've still got bathroom on the brain. Last week I visited Lowes and picked up a brushed nickle mirror for over the sink:

I also ordered the Rubbermaid FastTrack Pantry Kit - from Amazon. Theirs was just $116 with free shipping, as compared to Lowes $149. (And I did check it out while I was at Lowes - they had one left in stock and it had already been opened. No thank you. It was meant to be, I saved big bucks buying through Amazon instead.)

The kit is due to be delivered next Monday, so I'm hoping Mike will be able to take a break from all his other tasks to install it for me.

Paint & Playground Paradise

The weekend turned out to be much hotter then expected. And I'm not one to complain about the heat - I love it! The trouble is, you can't always be sitting by a pool drinking cool refreshing beverages when it's hot out. Sometimes you have to do hard labor and sweat yourself to death.

It started for me on Saturday. Mike didn't bring home the fuzzy rollers Friday night, but I decided that it would be smart to start cutting in. I could cut in around the largest part of the porch, paint that one section on Sunday, and have the fan installed by Sunday night. That was my original thought. It turned into two hours of pure sweat. Because of course, the porch is covered with furniture and the floor has already been stained. So to do the first section, I had to move the furniture, put down the drop cloth, clean off the bugs with a broom (which is a whole other disgusting story), and drag out and put up the ladder.

Wow, when I type it out like that I really sound like I'm complaining about the most menial of tasks. (Reminds me of someone else I know.) I'm not complaining. I'm stating. There was a lot of prep involved.

I cut in the first section with a brush fairly quickly and decided to move on. I had to move the furniture back, move more furniture out of the way, move the drop cloth and the ladder, clean more bugs, and remove outlet covers. Then I could cut in the next section. And then I just kept going. Move, move, clean, remove, move, paint... again and again until the entire porch was cut. By the last section, I was so sweaty toast. I was forcing myself to keep going, to finish. (Nevermind that I had to clean up afterwards.)

Needless to say, I accomplished much more then I set out to do. But after that hot hot Saturday afternoon experience, I just couldn't bring myself to do it again on Sunday with the roller. Not even in that first area where the ceiling fan is going to go. The mere thought! (That and the fact we were at a house party until 3am Saturday night.)

But don't think that we ended up lazing about on Sunday. The day was as jam packed as it was sweltering. Mike loaded up the playground dude's tractor parts (yeah, it ended up being unworthy of fixing), tools, and a chainsaw. A  couple hours later he was back with the playground, drenched in sweat. He and his friend Marcus discovered that it was cemented into the ground... cemented as in 4' sonotubes into the ground kind-of cemented. And you thought it weird that he was bringing a chainsaw! They broke a truck jack trying to remove the thing and ended up having to cut it off its foundation.

While the boys were wrestling with the playground, Mikey and I were home with Timmy and Richard, who came over and wrapped the last side-stair post and installed the last railing on the side stair. After that, they were both wiped and called it a day. Timmy said he might have a stair-thingie at his shop that would fit for our front steps.... So he wanted to check that out before he started out front anyway.

It wasn't but a few minutes after they left that Mike and Marcus pulled in with the playground. We spent the remainder of the afternoon putting it together.

I had originally thought of facing the set towards the garage on the left side of the backyard. That plan had me worried because of all the poison ivy in that area, but with trees on the right hand side, I saw little other option. Mike suggested turning it the other way, facing the hillside, so it could go on the right hand side of the yard. I've got to hand it to him - it was the perfect spot.

But much like previous playground owners before us, we found it to be too unstable to just stand there in the yard. We'd have to cement it in. And luckily for us, we just happened to have four extra bags of concrete! The perfect amount for the four holes we dug around the tower portion.

 

After we poured the cement, we put on the slide and installed the two new swings we bought. (The third spot will be for an infant swing.) It looked good - really good. The slide is a little short... and weak from years of weather and use. We'll probably have to increase the angle and purchase a new slide. All in good time. I measured for the canopy and it looks like it will fit perfectly! Although we'll have to fashion a new ladder - the old one is not safe.

Now, in regards to the poison ivy on the other side of the lawn. Sunday night, Mike just mowed it all down. And the lawn looks AWESOME.

I know it's pretty hard to tell from this picture... but the area on the left by the septic vent? It looks awesome. Unfortunately, there's still poison ivy over there by that old Jeep thing. (The red thing by the tree in the picture.) And poison ivy is also climbing up the tree.

How do I know it's poison ivy? I looked it up on this website: http://www.poison-ivy.org/. The entire time, we just thought most of it was regular ivy, because it wasn't shiny and the leaves weren't reddish, as we had always been taught. Boy were we mistaken. The leaves don't have to be reddish or shiny. They can climb, creep, and even grow into a shrub! And the bad news is, there's no full proof way to get rid of it.

Mike is going to physically pull out the ivy by the Jeep. We have a whole bunch of it on our rock wall too, just to the right of this picture, out of frame. For areas where you don't want ANYTHING to grow, you can use a mixture of dish washing soap and vinegar. I'm going to try it on the rocks this weekend if time permits. I wouldn't mind that garbage of plants dying off. You can't even see the rocks!

And thus concludes our program. Thanks for reading.

Scrapping Sunday

You know, I was feeling blue on the entire financial::improvement situation. "We're not where I want us to be," I kept thinking, angry at myself as if I could control any of it. Then I took a look at where we were at a year ago, July 2010. The porch was still ceiling-less! We were just trying to wire it at that point. The garage addition wasn't finished either! We still had two and a half Dodges and two 4Runners in the yard! Still browsing the posts I thought, "Wow! We've actually come such a long way!" And I felt much better.

Plus, despite a lack of new materials, Timmy's coming over on Sunday to do what he can with what we have. It'll be interesting. I think we have enough to wrap the last side-stair post and install the stair rail. Mike thinks he may have a good amount of front-stair material too. Time will tell. But if there's one thing Timmy's good at, it's making use of scraps. Very little goes to waste when he's around, and he's always thinking about ways to save money on materials.

Meanwhile, I know I told you all that I would have that playground this week. I haven't forgotten it. Poor Mike has spent every night in the garage this week, working super late nights on what we have dubbed, "The Poop Car." He needs to fix the lawn tractor belonging the the playground owner before we pick it up, but that shouldn't take long. I need to push him to do in the next couple days. Drop off the tractor and pickup the playground Sunday AM?

This week, the two swings we ordered from TV came in too. We're ready. Just fix the tractor, pickup the playground, set it up, install the swings, and measure for the canopy.

I've been looking up a safe and natural poison ivy killer for the backyard. Many online recommend soap and/or a combination of soapy water and vinegar... trouble is, this mixture kills everything. So I found this product. It's a plant based defoliant that I'm going to test out. Safe for pets, kids, and other plants... so they say anyhow.

Stairs, Windows, and Random Plywood

Mike was feeling much better this Sunday. And, with cabin fever setting in, and Timmy due over (haha due-over) to work on the stairs, Mike decided to get himself back to work on the kitchen window. I had some friends coming over at 2:30pm, so the guys were on a strict stop-everything a las 2:30 deadline.

Mike measured the wall and the window, allowing for new-fridge and future-corner-cabinet width. Then, we decided on the exact placement of the new window.

Next step was to create the window frame and insulate the sans-window area. Then came the difficult part. You see - our mudroom was an addition, tacked on to what used to be a cement porch. Unfortunately, when they joined the exterior mudroom wall to the exterior kitchen wall, they did not do a very good job. The two walls are at two different depths....

So... if we want to side that entire side with siding and make it look like a nice, one-piece, continuous house with no stoopid additions that weren't done correctly... We would need to build out the kitchen wall to match the depth of the mudroom wall. Build it out how? Plywood. Layers of plywood.

Lucky for us, we happened to have plywood. Plywood in the basement, plywood in the garage, plywood in the garage addition... plywood plywood everywhere! Leftover from this that or the other project.

 

You can see here the puzzle of plywood Mike and our neighbor Richard put together. Amazing that we just happened to have just enough to complete the job. Unfortunately, the hunt for plywood + cutting of the plywood + installation of the plywood = longer then expected. Mike was hoping to be able to install the window before the 2:30 deadline, but just couldn't make it. He papered the plywood and called it done for the day.

MEANWHILE! Timmy was hard at work on the side steps. To start, he had to pull up some of the decking to make room for the first post. The second post went down on top of the footing Mike poured last weekend.

From there, it was a simple matter of framing and decking the landing, then the first step. By the time my guests were arriving between 2:30 and 3:00, they had a step to enter on. And by the time they left around 5:30, they had a second step to exit on.

Mike will need to pour some additional concrete for the final groundish-level landing step, but all in all, I'm totally psyched about how the steps came out. Mike decided to make them nice and big - key for bringing up large items, large amounts of people, large people, and holding hands with kids down the stairs.

To finish off the kitchen wall for temporary, Mike put up tar paper. This weekend, the window goes in, do or die. And Timmy will be back on Sunday as well. It's a whole new look for the holidays!

We're so happy to be wrapping up our summer/fall projects. Winter once again will take us indoors, where the basement bathroom will be taking shape soon.

PS - Guess who couldn't resist the Home Depot black Friday appliance sale? I GOT MY FRIDGE! It's the LG model lfx28978ST.... and I saved over $800. The MSRP is $2700 .... I bought for $1899. WITH 18 months of 0% financing and a 4 year extended warranty for only $80 extra!!! Boo-Yah! Only problem is I'll have to wait until Feb 5th for delivery. Backorder.

Window Wating

What a difference from last weekend's hustle and bustle! This one was calm in comparison - a much needed breather for both of us, for sure. Sunday was calmer then calm, since the guys weren't able to come by to work on the porch. Stairs next weekend! We even have the materials list in hand and soon to be ordered up.

We actually attempted to go to Home Depot, since we needed less then our usual HUGE load of materials. Plus, I wanted to check out and purchase a big 'ol window for the kitchen. (Tax credit expires 12/31 people!) But, once again, HD let us down. They didn't have the right length of board. Ok, fine. I'll give them that. So Mike went to pick out the next longer, no problem. But all the boards were of very poor quality. He gave in quickly. We didn't need them at that very moment anyway, so why not order them?

Moving on to the kitchen window.
We currently have dos kitchen windows with the fridge in between.

We'd like to push the fridge over to the left, ditch that first left-side window, and install a larger window centered on the right hand side. A little Photoshop action and you can see the possible result:

Pretty sweet, right? Imagine this with a new fridge.... oooo, so cool. (Literally)

So I researched the possible fridges I might want and found that they all were about 36" wide. (By the by, that's like 6" wider then our current fridge... imagine the space!) I then measured the approx space taken up by our corner cabinet, since we'd need to install a second one to butt up to the fridge. That was about 6" additional. In total, I figured we'd have a max rough opening size of 60" by 48" - and that's the MAX.

Back at the 'ol HD, we checked out the window section. I didn't imagine they'd have anything in stock to meet our needs. I thought we'd be ordering something for sure. But believe it or not, they had a 4' x 4' sliding glass window with screen in stock for the low low price of just $107.

That seemed like a super low price to me. For some reason, I had it stuck in my head that we paid around $100 for the small sliding window above our stove. Maybe not.

Then I started thinking out loud, well we've got more room then that. Maybe this is going to be too small. But as Mike pointed out, "How big a view of the DRIVEWAY do you want."

Excellent point.

We were there, the window was there, it matched our over-the-stove slider, and it was only $107. I'd be a ding-dong not to buy it. So we did.

Mike was even half tempted to seize the day, rip all the siding off that side of the house, remove both old kitchen windows, install the new one, and plywood the entire side. (Since we probably have enough ply in the basement to do such a thing.) But he also really needed to do some wiring in his truck as well as an oil change and a few other maintenance type things in and around the garage. In the end, sanity won out and we didn't rip apart anything. Probably for the best. No job that large is ever so easy that you can complete it in one day. Something always goes awry.

Next weekend, our wood will arrive and stairs will be built, come what may.

Electrifying

Gung-ho, that was me. Bloggin on a mission and then POOF, drop off the face of the blogosphere for near to a week... leaving thousands in anger and suspense.

Or not.

But flaky and manic as I've been, it's all been for good reason. I've been extremely focused on crossing off items on that 'ol to-do list. First off, the electrical hook-up on the porch. Turns out, we had 9 of the 10 needed outlets in stock. And, Mike decided to patch the porch in with an already under-loaded breaker. So we didn't need that either.  So so... we were able to complete the wiring without having to head to the DeepHo.

But that doesn't mean we didn't head down there anyway. I still had a pole to return! And despite his grumblings, Mike was as glad as I was to bring it back and receive a $33 store credit, which we used to purchase porch outlet covers and concrete.

*TANGENT!*
While at the HD, we checked out the garage doors, which I'm planning to purchase for Mike for X-mas. (No secret. He knows, I know, and we're both happy about it.) This whole freakin' time, we thought they were mad expensive.

*SECOND TANGENT*
Years ago, when we were still in drywall-phase of the house, I had Overhead Door come and look at my garage for door-cost estimation purposes. Well, I don't know whether it was me looking so young, my house looking so old, or my vehicle and yard looking so.... redneck.... But the door dude had the audacity to ask my drywall guys if I "paid my bills." And I was so insulted that I completely severed contact with them - despite the fact that I had the cash and was ready to go at that moment.

But I realize now, it was meant to be. Because the HD has insulated garage doors in stock in store.... for the price of just around $250. When I saw, I sh*t. We don't need no fancy pants doors. We don't need no windows. (And we don't need no grammar either.) And apparently, we don't need to pay upwards of $1,000! Another $150-$200 and you can get yourself a nice garage door opener, complete with two remotes, an exterior keypad, and an interior button.

So, back to the current HD visit. After I had seen the doors and the prices on the internet, we just had to find out if they came with all the springs, tracks, etc. needed to install. Sure enough, everything came in the box! Amazing, isn't it? Three doors, coming right up this holiday season!

HD visit: successful on so many levels.
Electrical: complete!

And now for the bad news. Or, I should say, postponement news. Timmy was called into work on Sunday and couldn't come over to work on the stairs. Mike used the time to complete the electrical, so I can't complain too much. I was really hoping and dreaming that we'd be able to get the concrete poured.

I found out, by the way, that we in fact do not need sonotubes because we're not going to pour footings. We're going to pour pads. Big pads! iPads! (Sorry, couldn't resist.) So the entire footprint of the stairs will be concrete. This is beneficial in a few ways. First, it is a far lesser pain in the butt then to dig and pour footings. Second, with concrete under the entire stairway, there's no chance of annoying plant growth. I'm cool with that.

Unfortunately, we don't know what materials we'll need for the stairs, so we couldn't purchase those. The railings, however, I am going to have Mike purchase tomorrow for delivery on Friday. I figure, if the guys pour the pads on Sunday, they're going to need to dry. What to do while the concrete is drying? How about some railings! Sounds good to me, I just need to remember to send Mike to work with the paperwork that shows what to order.

Pole Wrapped

Yesterday was a perfect day for pole wrapping. Sun, fair temps, low wind... heavenly fall to say the least. And within a few short hours, the three guys had finished 4 poles!!! They would have even finished the last and final fourth pole, but this one is currently holding up our temporary steps... which, we're still in need of at the moment.

Plus, Timmy had a marvel idea. (And once I explain this, you'll see why I just love him to death!) You see, to fit the posts, the white pre-primed wood needed to be cut down by just a smidget. Obviously, that leaves us with a bunch of scrap smidgets. Trash, you ask? I would have thought so too. That is, until Timmy held one up to the ceiling where the trim meets the bead board. USE THE SMIDGETS TO TRIM THE CEILING! Oh my god, it was a revelation and it looked fabulous! So simple, but we never would have thought of it. We would have just gone out and spent hundreds of more dollars on trim, then burned the smidgets come January when burn season opens up.

Timmy, once again, saved us some big bucks. So I was so happy and excited to write him out a big check that very afternoon. (And, he never asks for any money... usually refuses it, actually. Which made me all the happier to finally be able to give him a substantial amount.)

Anyhoo - check out the new frontal view:

 

 

 Pretty swank, isn't it? (I forgot a pic of the smidget trim - I will try to grab one tomorrow.)

Once the poles were finished, the guys attempted to complete the trim up on the gambrel. (At the peak there.) However, something about having the wrong saw or no blade or something like that prevented them from completing it, and they ended for the day.

Plans for next Sunday - the steps begin! Concrete will need to be poured for the step footings, which I had never realized before. Once it cures, the steps can be built. Then - duh duh duh duh - railings. With the Halloween season upon us, I'm hoping to get an early jump on the railings. I have these crazy imaginings that I'll order them and have Mike pre-assemble all the sections so we're ready to slap them up as soon as possible.

Whether he'll be hip to that idea is another story. Hopefully, (oh please oh please) his new truck will be arriving via pro vehicle transport tomorrow. And once it's in our driveway, he's going to do nothing until he installs the needed fuel pump.

But I warned him last night! I said, I'm going to need the electrical on the porch hooked up for Halloween lighting. And I'm going to need it like, this week. On the shopping list there: all the outlets and a new breaker. With the truck arriving tomorrow, we should actually go out and purchase those like... oh, I dunno... NOW.

Halloween Party is Nov 6th.... the race to the finish is ON!

Clash of the Carpenters

It's Sunday night. And I'm looking at 1/3 of my porch ceiling. Yes, things were delayed last week... and having jinxed myself repeatedly, I decided not to type a word when the schedule changed to Saturday.... then Sunday.

And being Sunday, Mike was already booked fixing TJ's truck. So there we were... dual carpenters, one porch, a truck with no brakes, neighbors in and out, and so much madness. I was concerned it would be out of control, with everyone tripping all over each other. But it turned out. It really turned out. As you can see from the soon to be beautiful results.

But before you can say that doesn't look like a lot for a days work, the strapping for the rest of ceiling is done too - so we're ready to pretty much slap up the rest of the bead board at some point next week.

The next step, besides the obvious getting up of the bead board, is the removal of all the gutters across the front and side of the porch. That way, it'll be able to be trimmed on the outside. A very very good thing. After that? Stairs.

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3 Day Weekend Allure

Nothing is more exciting in home improvement land then a 3 day weekend. The possibilities are just endless! What's even more exciting? An extra Friday off.... which I happen to have this week. My mind is already spinning - I don't know what to do with myself.

I've considered at first painting the garage - which I primed about 2 years ago and still haven't gotten around to actually painting. This would be relatively easy and inexpensive and it's something I could do all by myself.

Yard work was another possibility for Friday - but we kinda tackled that this past Sunday morning.

And then there's the fact that all my friends want to hang out. They all think I'm waaaay too overproductive and need to relax a bit. It's probably true. And honestly I wouldn't mind maybe one day for relaxing.... just so long as something gets done too. Best of both worlds.

I have to talk to Mike about the possibility of stairs. Stairs would be great. In fact, if we could get a jump on it this week - during the week - it would be super great. Maybe drill all the holes one night, next night cut the railing and attach the banister..... I don't know. I'm probably hoping for too much considering how busy busy this whole month has been.

Oh - and did I mention I got some home depot coupons in the mail?! Highly tempting stuff there people. Again, the possibilities are endless....

Getting a Railing

This past Sunday was just a phenomenal day. Everything went perfectly, despite Mike's pessimistic, "This-is-going-to-suck-i-hate-you" attitude.

The plan, if you remember, included purchasing all the stair railing stuff from Home Depot and installing as much of it as humanly possible in one Sunday. (With the deepHo card paid off and in the clear, I had no problem whatsoever making a purchase over 299 that I would be a year in the clear over.)

When we originally did the upstairs hardwood floors last year, we purchased some stair railing stuff. Three newels with trim, one baluster with trim, and the oak board that all would attach to. But we never got further than installing the oak board, cutting the holes for the newels, and staining the newels. (Newels by the way = posts.)

The balusters I wanted were the black iron ones with the cool swirly designs in the middle, and we had purchased just one to check it out, see how it would look and attach - all that fun stuff. That first time around, I also grabbed a "How-to-Install-These-Things" info brochure.... which then sat aside like everything else for dam near a year.

But, if you remember, railings (or lack thereof throughout the house) were near the top of our new home insurance's list of Stuff To Be Fixed. So, with the card paid and the exterior work on hold, I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to tackle this project.

First step - figure out what the heck we needed. Lucky for me, I had saved that "How-to-Install-These-Things" info brochure... And - amazingly - remembered where I had put it! But the brochure only provided some info - for the real deal, we went to the company's website where they had compete print out instructions. Very handy!

So the standard height for the railing had to be between 36" and 41" and the distance between the balusters on a straight run had to be 4" on center. On the stairs, there would be two balusters per stair. Ok cool.

We did some measuring and counting and ended up with a total of 46 balusters. Plus we needed top and bottom trim pieces for each baluster, several sections of railing (at 10', 7', and 3'), hardware to attach railing to newel, a rosette for where the railing meets the wall, some drill attachments, more oak board for our top landing, more stain, and, just for the fun of it, I figured we could get a simple pole-type railing for the basement stairs plus the little railing holder things while we were there.

Wow - does that seem like a lot to you? Because for some reason or another I was worried about making the 299 at the deepHo. HA! Do you know how much just one of those cool iron balusters with the swirly things on it costs?! Nearly $9 a piece. $9 times 46 of them. HAHAHAHAHAAHA! Plus all that other stuff.

Yup. It was around $800 for the whole shebang. Can you believe it? They should make discount packs of the balusters - who ever buys just one anyway?! If we didn't need a railing for the over-the-stairs balcony, the whole thing would have been much more cost effective. We would have only needed 19 balusters. Such is life. You don't think about these things when you're designing your upstairs. You say, "Oh I'll worry about that later."

Anyway - as I said, I was ok with the whole thing after just paying off the card. No sweat.

Back home, we got to work. Our plan was to fit and test and drill everything - then, take it all back apart for staining. It was a lot of work, but pretty much everything went smoothly.

We installed the newels, then measured and marked every 4" for balusters. Then we drilled a 5/8" hole on each mark and stuffed all the balusters in. (Tight fit!)




Next, we measured out and cut the right length of railing and repeated the same 4" measuring, marking, and drilling to match the baluster holes in the floor.Then, we pre-drilled and attached the railing to the newels and double checked the baluster fit. Everything looked great.


We repeated the process on the small 3' section, but added a rosette at one end that would attach to the wall.

It was late in the afternoon at this point and everything was looking great. So we took it all apart. The railings and newels came out, the oak bottom piece came out, and all the balusters were set aside. We brought all the wood downstairs and Mike gave everything a first coat of stain while I cleaned up all the saw dust and wood shavings upstairs.



Nothing else we could do until the stain dried anyway. Plus it would all need a second coat. But since everything is pre-drilled and ready to rock - we shouldn't have any problems getting it up and installed for real this week!


The actual stairs will present different challenges. And, unfortunately, since I spilled paint on them and let it set for a million days - it won't clean off. So we have to sand and refinish all the stair treads. What a pain. But once that's done, figuring out the baluster heights and cutting them shouldn't be so hard. The info brochure outlined a pretty cool method that even I thought I could figure out. Plus, we have a metal chop saw already, so cutting the iron is no big deal either.

I figure we could tackle all that in a day too.... who knows which day....

So Very Outtofit

Out to lunch. That's the sign I should have put up on this blog. Because I've been 100% not here. Last week was madness, what with my wisdom teeth getting out, a settlement meeting, work madness.... This week will be no better. I got to work early this morning, tomorrow I'll be in the office at 5:30am for a shoot and not back until probably after dark, plus I have to work all day Saturday.

Joy to my world.

And I haven't even told you about the weekend before last.

Well, it was just a tornado of insanity. Saturday (the 31st) I did not feel well, but still I had to prep for Sunday's Impromptu-BQ for Mike's BDay. Meanwhile the guys worked on the porch in the AM and early afternoon - until of course it started looking really stormy out. Of course, after the guys left, it never ended up raining at our house. Figures. The Cape got hit pretty bad though I guess.

Wow. I can't even write coherently. I apologize. This post just sux! But I'll try and continue on anyway.

By the time the guys left on Saturday, the rest of the decking was done. And we had a new mascot - the scary petrified looking lizard. Our neighbor Dana found it in his garden and brought it over to try to scare me with... I wasn't scared, but the guys adopted it as our porch mascot.

At the end of the day, the guys tacked on our old makeshift stairway that used to be on the front door... you know, just so we could retire the step stool.


Here's the completed decking by the door. You can tell the difference between the Morse Lumber decking and the DeepHo decking. DeepHo stores all their stock inside, so their decking is dried out and lighter than the Morse PT decking, which is housed outside and is green. But it won't matter, the two will even out as they age, and we'll be eventually painting or staining it anyway.

But boy were we happy we got the rest of the decking from Morse. Their 14' pieces were as much as the DeepHo 12' pieces. How's that for a royal rip off? I don't even want to know how much I wasted getting all the 16' pieces there. Oh well. It's done now, nothing I can do.

Oh, and I forgot to mention - Saturday morning's delivery was our last huge delivery! All that's left to purchase now is trim, roofing, and clapboards... and paint and little stuff. I shouldn't speak to soon actually. All that little stuff ends up being super expensive.

And since this post is not quite all there, I'll attempt to tell the rest of the story in a second one.