Stair Repair

As the addition project was wrapping up, we had yet another project that came up, rather abruptly and unexpectedly. The steps to our backyard patio began collapsing, and it was clear we would have to take pretty immediate action to make sure we could exit (safely) from that door. And since that is how we let the dog out, among other things, we definitely could not ignore the problem. 

With the stair treads beginning to sag dramatically and everything feeling very "soft", we got down low to investigate. The wood was clearly rotting away and splitting. Here's the bottom of the stringer (did you know that piece is called a stringer? we didn't until last year). It was resting directly on the ground, which we have since learned is not correct because of said likelihood of rotting.

Yikes...

The top part of the stringer was splitting, probably because the rotten bottom made the whole thing move out of position, making the first step especially treacherous.

D did some research and decided this was a manageable do-it-yourself project (he and I have different ideas of DIY...). So he got to work, realizing that he could not take too long to leave us without back steps. He took apart the entire thing to remove the rotting stringers.

The old stringer went to the wood facing board just below the deck floor, but the new one was a little lower (even despite lifting it an inch, see below), so D had to add a bit more wood to having something to attach it to:

The biggest change from the old steps was making sure that the stringers did not rest on dirt, where they would rot more quickly. We bought some pavers to sit them on--which is why I mentioned that everything was about an inch higher now than it was before. We are pretty sure that this set of steps is really supposed to have one additional step on it, but obviously we did not have another stair tread to add, so we worked with what we had:

And voila! Steps that are not about to collapse. The decking material is still old and flimsy and we'd love to add this whole back exit to our list of things to remodel. We have ideas floating through our heads on how to build it out and add some screening to make it a walk-out screened in porch, but that's a project for another day. If we do any work, we'd also get materials to match the back desk of the new addition, in Trex pebble gray with white trim and matching handrails. So that was partly why it just wasn't worth trying to upgrade these while we were in emergency repair mode. Hopefully in a few years, it will look completely different anyway.