27. Steps

I know I said I was tired last night but tonight -- well it's a good thing there's only one day left in the work week or I'd be done for.

Today Rob and Ken, my two favorite carpenters, started their work.  The first thing they were to start on was the stairs up to the back porch.  For one thing they were very rickety and soon-to-be dangerous.  For another thing, I wanted them turned around, so you didn't have to walk around to the side of the house to go up.  This is a picture of the stairs before they started.  The porch was also a little slanted down to the right as a result of one of the joist boards coming loose.

They got going right away, with wood that I had picked up at Home Depot the night before.  We did a little back and forth, deciding what was going to go where, and before lunchtime they were almost done!

This is Roscoe checking out the progress.

And voila!  This is the staircase just the way I wanted it - they moved the landing and the opening onto the porch, and to me it makes more sense this way - you can get out of your car with groceries and what-not and climb right up the stairs.  They needed a few more boards to finish the steps, but I already picked those up and will have them on site in the morning.

After all this, we went inside and discussed what was next.  They did a little "exploratory surgery" into the kitchen ceiling, to figure out why there was a little 'sway' to the second story.  It turns out that the sway had been there for a long time - and the previous renovations were done right on top of it.  So long story short is:  if I have them jack up the floor to it's appropriate level, we would lose a lot of tile and flooring work that had already been done - at a great expense.  We came up with a way to support the lowest level, so the sag wouldn't proceed any further, and fix the kitchen ceiling cosmetically, so you wouldn't really notice.  There will always be a little slope to the upstairs hallway - if you put a bowling ball in one room I think it would eventually make it around the landing and down the stairs all by itself.  But hey, the house is almost 100 years old - what do you want?  I don't want to rebuild the whole thing.  One of the things I appreciate about Rob and Ken is that they know how to do everything, but still want to know how I want it done.  Usually I yield if they really think something is important, but when they present a choice, the decision is mine.  And I trust that they wouldn't steer me wrong.

Tomorrow we will probably start right in on demo in the kitchen - the drywall, plaster and lath have to come off the walls and ceiling, because the previous renovators made a poopy mess of it, pardon my French.  Should be a fun and dirty day!!