Project of the Day: Exterior Stairs
We’re at the point in the project where we are completely overwhelmed. A lot of things are in progress.
To help us stay on track, we’ve established Project of the Day or POTD. We pick one project to work on. It serves two purposes, it makes us feel like we’re making forward progress and it means we have some time for relaxing.
One of our recent POTD was actually over two days. First John built a new set of exterior stairs. It’s a simple platform with three steps. He made the steps wider than standard to make them easier for our parents to navigate.
The second day was installing the railing system. John had seen a version of oar railings on Maine Cabin Master and ran with the idea. After installing the frame for the railing, we got to work on our ballasters.
Step 1
John created a template out of quarter inch plywood, which we were able to trace onto pressure treated lumber. John trimmed each board to the width of the template. We could get several oars per board.
Step 2
After having the first oar cut out, we were able to use it to make sure the measurements were correct and it would fit properly. Then we figured out the best way to space them for safety and aesthetics to determine how many more we needed to cut out.
Step 3
We repeated the process to cut out a total of 10 oars, five for each side of the platform.
Step 4
Each oar was screwed into place. We still need to sand each one and the kids want to paint them, but we wanted to have them up for safety as soon as possible.
