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.

Not Quite Easy

I spent Saturday painting the trim of the stairwell and then stopped before edging the gray because I realized there was a slight problem. The handrail. It's going to be pretty impossible to paint the wall without removing it but suddenly I was stumped as to the best way to do that.

I suspect the best way to do it (i.e. the way to not ruin all the holes and make them unusable) is to remove the screws holding the hardware to the actual wood handrail. Would the holes still be small enough then to slip the handrail right back into place when I'm done painting? It would be much easier to paint the wall if I removed the hardware at the wall, but I suspect I will do more damage to the plaster and have to fill the old holes and create new ones. That seems like a lot of unnecessary damage to the wall. Though maneuvering around them with a paintbrush doesn't exactly sound fun.

Either way, we're going to have to take one set of hardware off. See the second one up from the bottom of the picture?

Not only is the spacing completely off (the hardware appears to have been installed completely at random and we don't really care about that too much) but it turns out that it's not actually attached to the wall anymore. We can slip the screws in and out just by tugging on them. So however we remove the rest of the hardware, that one will have to come out entirely and be moved, which means holes to fill, new holes to drill (in both the handrail and the wall) and Spackle to sand. No wonder I lost my momentum on this project.

So the question for you, reader, is whether or not to remove the 2 screws on the handrail or the 3 screw on the wall, for those holders that are still functional. Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Another weird problem: now that we fixed all the hallway light bulbs, we discovered  that the switch on the right (which we thought went to the light with the broken bulb) actually doesn't go to anything. We thought one went to each light, but the black switch on the left apparently goes to both, leaving us clueless as to what the one on the right goes to. At some point, we'll have to have an electrician come and sort that out.

And just because I can, here's a picture of the morning after a big snowstorm. The snow was so thick and wet that it was slipping down our roof in one giant mass. We had some pretty monstrous icicles too but D knocked them off so that we wouldn't be impaled. I especially enjoyed watching the "hat" on our lamppost slowly shrink throughout the day:

Time for Round Two!

The holiday's are over and D is days away from finishing his thesis, so home improvement is back on the to-do list. This spring, we turn our attention to the upstairs. Now, those of you who have seen our home have noted that readers who have not had the pleasure may not even realize we have an upstairs to begin with. That was at least partially deliberate (very astute readers might have wondered about the extra bedroom I mentioned in this post). You see, we don't like to acknowledge that we have so much space. And since we have a Cape Cod-style house with a door to the stairs, we like to keep it closed and pretend it's a coat closet. But the time has come to recognize that behind the door are two more bedrooms and a full bath.

So we are going to finally begin work on the upstairs, specifically on the hallway and the future master bedroom. We're limited because we don't want to do any major painting until the windows are installed (probably early March) but there are small projects to keep us busy until then.

Here are some pictures and plans for what's going to keep us busy for the next month or two:

First, the hallway. The door on the left leads to the living room (here's an old picture for orientation of where the door is from the living room side)

You can see that thanks to some woodwork trim, there's a neat upper edge that divides the lower level from the upper level, which is very convenient when it comes to painting--they can be different colors and be painted at different times (which is good considering the upper half is going to take lots of fancy ladder configurations to get the ceiling and walls above the stairs). This month we're focusing on the lower half.

We're painting it Knitting Needle, the same color as the living room and painting all the trim white (it's all that pale yellow the previous owners seemed to love). We're also hanging new hooks from that band of wood above the light switches. We removed some pretty ugly ones but want to continue to use it for storage. We bought

3 sets of 3 Bjarnum hooks from Ikea that we think will look nice either in use or closed. Here they are in both positions:

Project two is the walk-in closet (not original to the house, obviously, since they didn't own so much junk in the 1950s):

Since the structure is all Closet Maid, I can make a lot of changes without having to totally start over. I'm planning to move the wire shelf down, since I am not 6'5'' like the previous people apparently were, and I might swap out the inefficient shoe cubby with something that will hold more. You can see the air-conditioning duct (the silver thing) that runs through the closet, so I can't mess with that much. Also since the closet is so big, I want to paint it. I'm leaning towards a silvery blue and hoping to find one of those really cheap cans of paint at Home Depot that was mixed and then returned. It's a closet, so I'm not that picky. Now's the time, since once it's full of clothes it will be impossible to empty out.

And finally the bedroom. You can see from the color that it was a little boy's room before. Though we're not going to do anything until the windows are installed, we're planning ahead and trying to decide how we want to decorate.

It may not be clear from the pictures but we have two dormer windows that bring a lot of light into the room. Each window also has a tiny shelf ( a little too narrow to sit on) and also "attic" doors on each side for storage. We like that the sloping ceilings end fairly high up, so the room is open and airy instead of claustrophobic, like a few Cape Cods we've seen.

Right now, we're planning to paint the walls a pale sage green and use blues and grays as the accent colors. We want our furniture to be shades of black and white stain and paint (D is a proponent of mismatched, eclective furniture though I tend to prefer buying in sets). We want a lot of storage and so have been looking everywhere for various storage beds (alternatively known as captain's beds). We've found a few good solutions by Pottery Barn, Gothic Cabinet Craft, and Blu Dot but Ikea beat them all out in price and customizability (that's not a word, but you know what I mean).The Ikea Mandal is really cheap and we can paint it whatever color we want. We bought one this weekend and I'm considering if it would be possible to stack two of them, for added storage space and height. Structurally, it does not seem impossible, though I can't find evidence of anyone else doing it...

The headboard (sold separately) is pretty cool and we might decide to buy it and install it somewhere else, but it doesn't quite do it for me as a headboard.

Other ideas for the bedroom: painting the ceiling a soft gray instead of bright white; installing a ceiling fan; installing wall lamps on each side of the bed; finding a headboard we like; turning one of the dormer cubbies into a little vanity area for me; finding plush, gorgeous rugs; finding the perfect floating nightstands that have a drawer (Most are just shelves. The drawers on the bed necessitate having a nightstand attached to the wall, so it doesn't block the drawers from opening).

And that's what's going on with us. As always, suggestions are always welcome. We really have no idea what we're doing, we just pretend like we do.