Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Stairway to Heaven

Bad news...we found a squirrel under the stairs the other day!!!


















Just joking...that's me hiding under the first flight of stairs with respirator on for safety...and a pack of shims ready to fix the squeaky stairs. This was quite the adventure. :)

The skirt board along the edge of the staircase had all sort
s of gaps between it and the end of treads, then there were also some gaps inbetween the treads and the risers themselves. Add 96 years of people trompsing up and down the stairs, some amateur attempts to eliminate squeaks and you've got a lot of loose parts to tighten up. Basically I had to re-shim every tread and riser back into place to get rid of all the gaps and squeaks. Easy right?














The hardest part of this project was probably convincing Kelly that I need
ed to cut a 30" x 16" hole in the living room wall...minutes before our paint crew was supposed to show up. She let me cut the hole = she must REALLY love me. :) Things pretty much went according to plan. I had Kelly jump up and down on the steps above to help me find all the bad ones, got everything shimmed up, then shot staples in all the shims to hold them in place long-term.

















































After I got the hole in the living room patched up I turned to fixing the skirt board on the top-side of the case. I scribed a line along the treads/risers before I removed the board, then cut out the notches for the steps, then carefully slid it back into place...AROUND the treads/risers instead of tucked lazily BEHIND them. YAY!!!


























The coolest part of this mini-project was finding what was left of a newspaper from 1913 (some classifieds, some sports) and an old matchbox. You'll have to stay tuned though for more fun details/pics of those. :)

Posted by: The Squirrel Under the Stairs...errr...Evan

2 comments:

  1. hey evan! great work on all these house renovations. it really does take a lot of effort to do it all and it looks like you're having fun! we're renovating our basement right now... so far we've put up drywall, taped, mudded, sanded, primed. we're currently in the process of taking down the wallpaper in the bathroom. next up is repainting the ceilings white, painting the walls, putting up wall decals, putting up trim and redoing the flooring. we've been at it for about 6 months now and we hope to be done within 6 months haha! i don't know how you can renovate SOO much on your house.. it's sooo much work and so tiring!!! well good luck with the rest, your house is lovely and can't wait to see more!

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