A Little Light Carpentry
We've had an ongoing conversation about how to make it easier to get in and out of the basement. Our method, since completing the foundation work, has been this rickety ladder, which adds a certain disincentive to putting away tools after a long hard day of working.
We've had several ideas about putting in stairs from the basement to the first floor, which would be awesome, but the reality is that those stairs were not going to happen because they would require us to move the laundry elsewhere, which relied upon us having a place to put it, and this, and that, and so on.
Finally, Noel came up with an idea and it had something to do with this:
Last weekend we found this slightly funky jigsaw in a garage nearby (the owners had given us leave to scour through for anything we might want). Noel spent some time fixing it up and now we have a really good jigsaw (we also have a really bad one). That turned out to be the finest tool for making a nice set of stair stringers.
Indeed, in just a few hours over the last couple of afternoons, Noel built a large stair and landing item. This is a piece of furniture, if you will: a platform with a stair hanging off it. Because it basically only needed to be as tall as the old ladder, he could optimize the rise height and tread run.
It was pretty exciting seeing it go together.
The last step was not even in place when Rosie made her first exploratory run down into the basement to check things out. The dogs have steered clear of the entrance to the basement ever since the traumatic "let's see if they will go down a ramp" incident of 2006. Now they just need to get over the tall sill and it's like any other staircase.
It is unbelievably comfortable to use the stairs rather than the ladder. Even the fact that you need to duck at the end to avoid the floor joists of the first floor does not lessen the wonder that is not having to climb another ladder at the end of a long day of work.
Technorati Tags: carpentry, construction, dogs, stairs
posted by ayse on 04/06/09