Yes it’s been a few days since I’ve updated I know…

I’m just so busy, I spent all day friday and all day saturday redoing my steps, I’ve got sunburn on top of my sunburn and the interesting thing is that my face only has sunburn on one side really, just a little on the left side. My right side neck is is all burnt as well and I’ve got an interesting tan line from my sunglasses and you can see where I had my gloves on as well.

But the steps are basically done, the main part is anyway, once I got to the top I found that they’re crooked… since the concrete was really bad I had to do the very top step as well, but that wasn’t very safe, there would be a nice 1 1/2″ bump from the wood right there on the top so I decided to cover the landing as well with wood, kinda like a platform on top. When I started it I found that the top step was crooked, I lined up the planks with the top one and started running them back but since the top step wasn’t square everything the planks on the landing are crooked now so now I have to figure out some way to make them straight.

I have wooden steps going up to my porch that will need replaced as well eventually, but what I think I’m going to do is remove the riser and run the wood planks under the first step so that you won’t notice how crooked they are, sort of an optical illusion type deal. I’ve got lots of extra wood cuts so I can play around with it to get it looking correct

so I was thinking just how much this little project cost me, about $350 in materials and so far close to 17 hours in labor, billing out at $25 per hour that comes out to more in labor than the materials cost, but still the cheapest quote I got for having someone redo my steps fully, ripping them out and re-pouring the concrete was about $5,000, so I think I’m coming out ahead. I guess it’s  a good thing I have the tools and knowledge to do this sort of stuff…

One big change will be in the winter though, you can’t use regular rock salt on wooden steps so I have to get the more expensive calcium stuff, and of course once per year I’ll need to hit them with Thompsons Water Seal, if I maintain them they’ll last pretty much forever

yeah I’m more than a geek…