Last week, while sweating buckets out under an especially enthusiastic Mr Sun, I asked myself why on earth I had “fixed” the deck stairs the way I did.
What should have been a simple stair replacement morphed into a full removal and replacement of the staircase on our back deck.
Perhaps I got tired of the work years ago and decided to call it “good enough” and pat myself on the back for struggling through. Any future problems could be handled by my future self.
So, here I am, Mr Future-self, and I am shaking a fist at my past-self for being such a putz.
After some confusion logging into my Lowe’s account, I managed to put together a full list of items I would need for the new stair project.
As I was about to place the order, my mother reminded me that we could charge it to our Home Depot card and also get some rewards if we shopped through MyPoints.
So, I emptied my cart and navigated to the Home Depot site and filled it anew in the shopping cart. The lumber was available right away, but the metal brackets would need to be shipped to the store.
I bought two 5-step stringers and two 2×6 boards, 12 feet in length. The help file on the site said they would cut the boards in-store to fit in the car.
The Pickup
The next day, we left the house at 2pm and drove to the Home Depot to pick up the wood. We also had a doctor’s appointment for our cat Mei Mei at 4pm.
We arrived at 2:40, pickup was quite quick, and an employee delivered the lumber to the cutting shop.
I was told the employee who cut the wood was occupied moving lumber, but he would be available in 2 minutes.
40 minutes later and after multiple requests for assistance, I finally managed to get the wood cut. Unfortunately, my ride had left for the doctor’s appointment at 4pm.
So, I sat on the floor near the entrance to wait for her to return. That’s also when I decided to write this post.
The store was busy, and the staff appeared physically exhausted, but at least the work got done.
The next steps of my project include staining the wood and pre-assembly. I still need the steel brackets, which should be shipped to the store next week.
The Assembly
I swung by the store to pick up my order a few days later and then went home and procrastinated the project for about a week.
Once I got myself together, I went out and stained the stringers one morning, and then over the course of several days, I managed to get the steps stained as well.
I decided it would be simpler to pre-assemble the deck near the basement door and then drag it up the hill to the deck. This sort of worked, but I ended up only attaching two of the five steps cause it was damn heavy.
It was an absolute struggle trying to do this without another person handy. The stairs just wouldn’t stay in place long enough to nail them in place. I had to get something to prop them up so that my hands were free to handle the hammer and hold the joistner in place.
Once I got the joists solidly attached to the deck, things got easier. I screwed the joist in place and then drove several nails through the eyelets, into the top of the stair stringers.
The hillside was sloped, so the stairs weren’t properly level, but I was able to use some shims to balance it out. I may need to drive some stakes into the ground and attach them to the staircase as additional support later on.
After I got the staircase lined up, I noticed that there was a gap on either side. Somehow, I missed that the old staircase was four feet across, and I had asked for 3-foot boards at the store.
The Last Step
The new stairs are 3-footers. Not a crazy change, but it does seem a bit off.
The next step was to add the remaining steps and then finish it off with an extra coat of wood stain. For the fifth step, I reused some of the older two-by-fours from the previous set of stairs. I forgot to stain these, though, so they only got a top coat and not an undercoat or the sides.
After I finished the project, my mother reminded me that we needed a railing. So that will be the next “last step.”
Fat Wallet Refugee 