Week 10

What a great weekend! We set out to build some steps to connect our side deck to our backyard, and we actually did! Our most satisfying project so far. Immediate gratification goes a long way with both of us.

SATURDAY

We had a rare night out in which we imbibed in some drink, so we got a late start. A dog walk, breakfast, and a 2 hour run to Home Depot later, and we didn't get out into the yard until 3. We've never attempted any carpentry like this, so it's going to be somewhat of an adventure. I read an article and called up some crusty algebra skillz to figure out the dimensions.

Here's me outlining the first stringer.



Chuck cut them out with a circular saw and used a band saw to get the corners out. Of course I forgot to take pictures of Chuck in action cutting the pattern out, so here are the little triangles as proof that he did. They sell them pre-cut at Home Depot, but not long enough for what we needed.





Here's the first stringer attached to the deck. My measurements weren't perfect - the top 2 stairs have 1 inch less between them than the rest, and the length of the stringer fell short of where I thought it was going to hit, but we decided we could live with both shortcomings, rather than starting over with another trip to Home Depot. We had installed the posts the night before so they would have plenty time to set.



While I was drawing the stringer pattern, Chuck did the final mow of the year on our new lawn:



We put up the other stringer, and by this point it was starting to get dark, so we called it a day.





SUNDAY

What a great day!!! We spent the entire day in the yard today. We both have discovered that we prefer yard work over working inside. While I worked on the stairs, Chuck put the rest of the fence up.

I learned to use the saw, so I measured and cut all of the wood for the stairs



And then hammered them onto the stringers







Part 2 of this project, which at this point will probably be done in the spring, is to build stairs into the ground where the dirt is at the bottom of these stairs. Then we'll have stairs all the way down into the patio area.



The most exciting part of the day was when the dogs got to go into their new yard for the first time. You can only know how important this is if you have 2 big dogs that haven't had a yard for a year and a half. I think we were more excited than they were!!

Here's the maiden voyage:



And this is how they looked for about 20 minutes as they ran around like maniacs:




Check out the top left of this picture.



I didn't even notice it the first time I looked through the pics. Skeptics say it's just dust particles, but I believe that we had an unearthly visitor via orb helping us celebrate our success!

This was our last big project until December because we had something going on every weekend in November. I was hoping this would give me time to get caught up on posts, but it's March 6th, and I'm just finishing up October, so you see how that went. We have actually gotten quite a bit done since then, so sometime soon I'm going to do one big catch up post.