New exterior stair section added
Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2012 1:27 pm
Well, it seems like I'm on here posting then quiet a looong time. Been a busy summer so far. We moved in here last October, and had a cold winter with mice dancing through the place, but not too many problems. The worst thing about the bad floors was the washer pushed itself right through the floor, so we tried Mark's trick on laundry floors that's in his book. Came out nice and we finished up winter too busy working to tackle anything else when this spring brought out the fact that our stairs outside were really in sad shape. They began to scare us, and I had to build a quickie ramp for our new washer to go up on and our old washer to go out on - the washer and flooring cost a bit, so we had to get by with the ramp for a bit - you all know how it goes…
I used the time to look up how to build stairs and finally made up my list and hit Home Depot. We have a small car, so their courtesy cutting of lumber was really helpful. I went early in the morning, during the week and one of the people there helped me sort through the pressure treated lumber to find good pieces, then cut the big ones so they would fit in the car. There almost wasn't enough room for me - I had to hunch over the steering wheel and took the back way home!
I'm real proud of these stairs because power tools scare me, so I built these with a Japanese hand saw (one of these :
http://www.amazon.com/Shark-Corp-10-231 ... =Shark+saw
and a cordless drill/driver. The hardest part was figuring out the stringers, as the former owner hadn't built them to code, and I couldn't for the life of me get the first (bottom) rise to be correct, but in the end, I figured you don't stub your toe on it, you don't trip on it, so the heck with it! Also, I had to find instructions where the top step was level with the deck, due to the way the "apron" board on the deck was. There simply wasn't enough support for me to have the stringer rest on a lower board, as there was no post in the middle! And we didn't have the funds to rebuild the whole kit and kaboodle.
I'm letting it weather a bit and then will paint. Anyone know what's the latest on how long to let pressure treated lumber weather before finishing? I've read anywhere from a few weeks to 6 months! Cheers,
I used the time to look up how to build stairs and finally made up my list and hit Home Depot. We have a small car, so their courtesy cutting of lumber was really helpful. I went early in the morning, during the week and one of the people there helped me sort through the pressure treated lumber to find good pieces, then cut the big ones so they would fit in the car. There almost wasn't enough room for me - I had to hunch over the steering wheel and took the back way home!
I'm real proud of these stairs because power tools scare me, so I built these with a Japanese hand saw (one of these :
http://www.amazon.com/Shark-Corp-10-231 ... =Shark+saw
and a cordless drill/driver. The hardest part was figuring out the stringers, as the former owner hadn't built them to code, and I couldn't for the life of me get the first (bottom) rise to be correct, but in the end, I figured you don't stub your toe on it, you don't trip on it, so the heck with it! Also, I had to find instructions where the top step was level with the deck, due to the way the "apron" board on the deck was. There simply wasn't enough support for me to have the stringer rest on a lower board, as there was no post in the middle! And we didn't have the funds to rebuild the whole kit and kaboodle.
I'm letting it weather a bit and then will paint. Anyone know what's the latest on how long to let pressure treated lumber weather before finishing? I've read anywhere from a few weeks to 6 months! Cheers,