Upper Stairs
Noel added some blocking to those stair stringers to hold the handrails. Also some cross-blocking to help take any lateral loads on the rails.
Once that was in place the stringers were very strong, indeed. I was a little concerned about where Noel put the cross-blocking, but it could not get much stronger if the blocking were where I told him to put it, so no biggie. It's also situated under a board, so it won't be a place where dirt piles up.
Today when we got to work, Noel put Vycor over the upper surfaces of the stringers and joists while I got down to work putting plugs in all the screw holes in the last part of the deck. That was a lot of fun work. I'm really not sure which is more exciting.
Then we got to work installing the boards on the stairs. Noel made some little wood wedges to help hold the first riser in place; it is slightly shorter than the height of the riser itself, which will be hidden behind the tread boards.
Installing the boards took most of the afternoon. Each one had to be marked, predrilled, screwed in place, then plugged. I think the shadow pattern on the plugs is really interesting.
And then we had stairs. Just like that. Well, we're still jumping off the deck onto the ground, but soon! Soon we will have stairs all the way from the door to the ground.
We also installed that one last surface board we ran out of screws for this week. It's almost like we might finish this thing.
posted by ayse on 05/12/12