The weekend began with a late afternoon trip to Philly. The plan was to spend the night at a cheap hotel in Philly (and maybe hit the town), wake up early, hit the Iron Shop at 8 am when it opened, pick up my staircase, get back to Baltimore my 11, and spend the rest of the day assembling it.
Lighter than expected traffic landed me in the Philly area much sooner than expected. The time and my location made it possible for me to pick up the stair on Friday, and come back home that night! I spent quite a while exploring Philly after I picked up the stair, trying to avoid the highways during Friday rush hour. It was interesting, but I can say the sprawl there puts Baltimore to shame. Their arterial roads are like mini-highways running through neighborhoods. It’s impossible to make a U-turn.
On Saturday Ryan came over to grout the tile, Evan came over to help with the stairs, and my hauling contractor came to haul off the last of the pile of dirt that has been sitting in my backyard since I excavated the foundation for the addition. It was only 3 months ago, but it seems like a lot longer. As it turned out, we had the wrong additive for the grout, and I bought the wrong size thru-bolts for the upper deck railing for the 2nd time! After a trip to Lowe’s and a stop at Qdoba, we finally started really working at 2:00 p.m. or so.
Installing the stair was not a simple task. Granted, I have installed 2 of these Iron Shop kits in the last 3 years, but this one is a full 1-1/4 turn spiral with 4 times as many spindles, and is a full 15 feet tall!
The pole for this thing weighed about 200 pounds by itself, and took all three of us to get it up to the 2nd floor deck. Getting it upright from that point took tying a rope to one end and raising it into position from the upper deck.
After the center pole is upright, the treads are lowered one at a time, and the landing is secured to the upper deck. We began to assemble the stair, got about 4 treads down and realized we left one out! We disassembled it, detached the landing, added the runaway tread and started all over again.
After about half of the treads were installed, Evan noticed that the angle of the stair would not allow access to the entrance (the stair itself was blocking the entrance). I had been planning for a much smaller stair, but code required a 5 foot diameter one. The only solution at this point was to change the direction of the rise (from counter-clockwise to clockwise). This mean disassembling the whole thing once again, and starting from the top one more time.
Third time was a charm, though the weather did not cooperate. It was chilly all morning, but the temperature really dropped in the late afternoon. Our teeth were chattering, and our fingers were frozen, but we kept at it, installing all of the hundreds of screws, nuts and bolts required to build the kit. Pictures will be up tomorrow.
I was completely exhausted on Saturday night, and kept it local in LP.
On Easter Sunday I slept in, and took care of a few punchout items and cleanup around the house. I’ve already moved the contents of my closet to the new closet, and will likely move my bed this week! I met up with my cousin Shelly for dinner. We hit the inner harbor and went to Cheesecake Factory (touristy, I know, but the food is still damn good).
I spent a good bit of time this evening researching dog breeds. I want to get a puppy as soon as I am not super busy with the house. There are so many to choose from, and so many heated opinions on breeding, standards, mixes, etc. We’ll see.
Evenings this week I’ll be really finishing up the bedroom, and changing focus to the kitchen and bath downstairs. There’s no rush, as the cabinets won’t be in until mid-may.
-C
.. would have been the charge. I bought some new tropical fish yesterday. I don’t have a good reputation for long fish survival rates in my home, but this time I almost killed them before they even got into the tank.
he other bands because I had to get back to Baltimore and work the next day.
